^uii;i,in;;;;,;r 



WW 

mm- 



1"" 






Hi 







"^* ^^' 



o 0^ 






V 



<^^: 






^ 











•Vc. * . . . » 



* J 1 A ■ 



..^■^ 



^^% 












.."t, -^ 







V- 






A 






" * " '^^ 







V 












"^ '^-e-^^^ oV 




\.^^% 



nO°.. 









"■p 







'^ '%ii 


















^ . v< 





^. 



.0°. 






x^^^. 



^"^/H"' v#' 







.^^-^ 










^i c 




- v^ 



^0^ 









A <= ^^^^^^' 



^ >/- ^ s o '^- ' 









V 






^ 






.-\ 



C\>i^^ .^^ 



V •:^ 



% ^^" 
>^'% 



-^. -^ * « s ^ \ \ 




SERMONS 



^\xt\^ 3txm 



RT. REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.B. 

Lafe Bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts 



5 > 3 3 J 3 
3 > 3 



> 93»»K- > JJOJ -)o 3^ 3 •« 

-) J 1 r> 5 3 3) 33 3 



^ ^- ^ ,^ ; ^^.. ; '1 3 -^ 3^3 

3 . \\\ 3 3 3,^\* V ''' 

) 3 , 3 -• J-* J -, -• • ^ 3 1 



NEW YORK 

E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 

31 West Twenty-third Street 

1901 



^> ^ \<\'' 



Copyright, i8gj 
By E. p. Dutton and CoMPANy 

^ 0^ 



• ,•• • ,♦•,•■• « •• 



CONTENTS. 



Sermon 

I. Thk Mystery of Ixiquity ^^"l 

"The Mystery of Iniquity." -H. Thess. ii 7 
(March 19, 1865.) 



V. 



18 



35 



55 



II. Thk Valley op Baca 

" Wlio passing througli the Valley of Baca make it 
a well; the rain also fllleth the pools." -Psalms 
Ixxxiv. 6. (March 12, 1865.) 

[II. Homage axd Dedicatiox 

" And tue four and twenty Elders fall down before 
Him that sat on the throne, and worship Him that 
hveth for erer and ever, and Cast their Crowns before 
the throne."- Revelatiojt iv. 10. (Oct. 26, 1873.) 

:V. The Egyptiaxs dead upox the Seashore. 
" And Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the Sea- 
shore. -ExoDLsxiv. 30. (Sept. 21, 1890.) 

The Battle of Life 

"For we wrestle not against Flesh and Blood but 

against Principalities, against Powers, against the 
Ru er, , ,,e .^.^^^^ ^, ^^.^ ^^^^^^^ 

W.ckedness m high places." -Ephesiaks vi. 12 
(^ov. 1, 1885.) 

The Djoxity axd Greatxess of Faith 90 

turHoralsT" ^T c^ '^"^ '^ ";^ '"''' '"^^ "^ 

^ ^JlOSt. —I. COKINTHIANS xii. 3. (1881.) 



/ 



lY CONTENTS. 

Sermon Page 

VII. The Sanctuary of God 108 

'* Then thought I to understand this, but it was 
too hard for me. Until I went into the Sanc- 
tuary of God ; then understood I the end of these 
men/' — Psalms Ixxiii. IG, 17. (Noa^ 24, 1872.) 

VIII. Come and See 129 

** Philip saith unto him * Come and See.' " — John 
i. 46. (Nov. 3, 1872.) 

IX. The Principle of the Crust .... 153 

' * Let no man deceive himself. If any man tliink- 
eth that he is wise among you in this world, let him 
become a fool, that he may be wise." — I. Corin- 
thians iii. 18. (Jan. 23, 1887.) 

X. The Leadership of Christ 171 

"In my Father's house are many mansions. I 
go to prepare a place for you ■ and I will come 
again and receiA^e you unto myself." — John xiv. 2. 

(Sept. 12, 1875.) 

XI. Peace in Believing 187 

*' Now the God of hope fill you with all Joy and 
Peace in Believmg, tliat ye may abound in Hope 
through tlie Power of the Holy Ghost." — Romans 
XV. 13. (March 31, 1878.) 

XIL Whole Vie\ys of Life 208 

" * And Balak said unto him, ' Come, I pray thee, 
with me unto anotlier place, from whence thou 
mayest see them. Thou shalt see but the utmost 
part of them, and shalt not see them all : and curse 
me them from thence.'" — Numbers xxiii. 13. 
(Sept. 23, 1888.) 

XIII. Higher and Lower Standards . . . 224 

* ' Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this Pres- 
ent World."— II. TiMOTHYiv. 10. (Nov. 18, 1888.) 



CONTENTS. V 

Sermon Page 

XIV. The Natural axd the Spiritual . . 242 

" Howbeit that was not first which is Spiritual, 
but that which is Natural ; and afterward that 
which is Spiritual." — I. Corinthians xv. 46. 
(Oct. 28, 1888.) 

XV. The Stone of Shechem 260 

** And Joshua said unto all the people, ' Behold, 
this stone shall be a witness unto us ; for it hath 
heard all the words of the Lord which He spake 
unto us : it shall be therefore a witness unto you, 
lestyedeny your God.'" — Joshua xxiv. 27. (Oct. 
6, 1878.) 

XVI. The Nearness of Christ 277 

*' Howbeit, we know this man whence He is: 
but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence 
He is." — John vii. 27. (Nov. 17, 1889.) 

XVII. Prayer 296 

** If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, 
ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto 
you." — ^ John xv. 7. (July 14, 1867.) 

XVIII. The Eternal Humanity .310 

'^ I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and 
the End, the First and the Last." — Revelation 
xxii. 13. (June 12, 1864.) 

XIX. The Christian Ministry 327 

** And the Evening and the Morning were the 
F^-rst Day." — Genesis i. 5. (Nov. 3, 1889.) 

XX. Foreign Missions 346 

*' And He said unto them, * Go ye into all the 
World and Preach the Gospel to every Creature.' " 
— Mark xvi. 15. (Jan. 20, 1889.) 



The dates given are those on which the Sermons were first preached. 



SERMONS. 



I. 

THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. 

" The mystery of iniquity." — 2 Thess. ii. 7. 

In this season of Lent, the one thought which we 
want to bring and keep before ourselves is the 
thought of our own sinfuhiess. These weeks are set 
apart for the very purpose that we may make famil- 
iar to ourselves the idea of human sin, its sources, its 
nature, its effects, its remedy. We turn that idea 
over and over, look at it on this side and on that, try 
to know it by every point of access, try to let it com- 
pletely get possession and control of us. And thus 
there are many subjects which are proper to be 
treated — the extent of human sin, its enormity, its 
variety, its tenacity, its sorrow, its penalty, the in- 
gratitude of man in committing it, and the great love 
of God in pardoning it — all these are fit and famil- 
iar topics for Lenten consideration. 

In our text Paul suggests another, — not less fit, 
though perhaps not so familiar, — " The Mystery of 
Iniquity," the mysterious character of human sin. 
Let us try to turn one or two of the many sides of 
this subject into view to-day and see if we cannot 
get some idea of it. 



2 THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. 

What does he mean, then, by the mystery of sin ? 
Is not sin the one great present palpable thing which 
everybody understands by the clear . witness of his 
own experience? But remember what a mystery is. 
A mystery I take to be the general name for any 
event whose reality or fact is evident, but whose 
method or way of accomplishment it is not in our 
power to understand. Thus, for instance, we call 
the force of gravitation a mysterious power. Every 
faUing apple, every steady mountain, bears witness 
that such a force really exists ; but what it is, how 
it works, where its causes and conditions lie, who 
can tell ? So we talk about the mystery of life. 
Life is self-conscious. It testifies itself in every 
living action. The fact of life runs in the blood, 
beats in the pulse, speaks in the voice, thinks in the 
brain. But the mystery lies deeper, in the unfound 
methods, in that long-sought something which neither 
physician nor metaphysician has yet tracked to its 
hiding-place, that unnamed essence in Avhich the 
true cause of life resides. And yet again of God — 
we speak of Him as the great all-embracing Mystery. 
You see again, it is not the fact but the method of 
His existence that is mysterious. We know that Ha 
is Creation, Providence ; the Human Consciousness, 
the Divine Revelation, — all tell us that. How He 
is ; what is meant by eternal and uncaused existence ; 
how the sacred union of the three persons is bound 
into the single life of Deity ; what it is to be om- 
nipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, — these are the 
things we do not know. It is our ignorance of these 
that makes God a mystery to us. Shall we take yet 



THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. 6 

another ? Look at death — that one great solemn fact, 
which nobody can hide, the gap m a household 
that stares itself into our remembrance day after 
day — or in a nobler Avay, the certainty of a Avon 
victory of a soul freed from its earthly suffering and 
entered on its endless joy. Either way the fact is 
past our doubting, but who knows how it comes or 
what it means ? The silver cord is slowly loosed, or 
the golden bowl is suddenly broken, and we can only 
stand by and wonder into what new ways of life this 
death ushers the dejjarting soul. 

In all these cases, then, you see w^hat we mean by 
a mystery. Some event Avhose fact is evident but 
whose methods and modes are dark. Now, if we 
apply this to the phrase of Paul, the " Mystery of 
Iniquity," it must mean the same. Iniquity or sin 
is one of the great evident patent facts of the world. 
No man with his eyes open doubts that it exists. But 
the more we have to do with it, the more we feel 
that the ways of its existence and operation are 
obscure. It is a subtle, elusive, inapprehensible 
thing, if we attempt to grasp all its movements. 
We understand w^hy in the first sin it took as its 
first typical representation the figure of the serpent, 
which cheats the eye with sinuous changes of place 
continually, refuses to be located, and while it leaves 
no doubt of its existence is seen only in flashes and 
a wavering indistinctness. 

My object to-day is to exhibit in some of its 
aspects this mysterious nature of human sin. Do 
not suppose that I Avish to occupy your time with 
a merely curious or speculative study. I have no 



4 THE IVIYSTEPvY OF INIQUITY. 

right to do that. I Avish to speak earnestly and 
practically, and I think we shall find an abundance 
of practical lessons resulting on all sides of us as we 
go on. 

1. First, then, iniquity or sin is mysterious in its 
origin. How did sin begin? It is the old question 
w^hich has rung through all the philosophies as well 
as all the theologies and found no answer. And see 
how it fulfils our description of a mystery. The 
fact of a beginning of sin is one of those which very 
few men have had the hardihood to doubt. Not 
merely revelation to those who received it, but 
even human reason to those who made it their 
teacher, has always signified that the wrong was an 
importation, an intrusion, an invasion in the world. 
That there was a time when it was not, there was a 
moment when it began to be. This has been always 
one of the dearest and most precious thoughts of men, 
one that they laid hold of the most eagerly, one that 
they let go of last. And men have always seemed 
to carry a certain sort of proof of their idea about 
w^ith them in the very pictures and ideals of perfect 
goodness, — Avhich all ages have treasured and kept 
alive. I suppose there is no other way of explaining 
the strange fact that amid all the personal badness, 
and social corruption that is in the world, the human 
mind has been able to preserve the ideal of a pure 
society and a perfect life, to dream of it, sometimes 
to strive after it, except by acknowledging the 
reality of an entrance of iniquity into the world, 
and looking back to a time before that invasion when 
the world was sinless. 



THE MYSTEKY OF INIQUITY. 5 

But readily and widely as men grant the fact, 
this does not touch in the least the method of the 
great intrusion of sinfuhiess. Still the " Mystery of 
Iniquity " remains as dark as ever. How the hard 
questions crowd up which any of us can ask and no 
wisdom yet is wise enough to answer ! If sin came 
in, whence came it? Nay, what is it? Is it an 
active thing forcing itself violently upon unwilling 
humanity, or is it the new result of a fermentation 
of the ingredients, the passions, and powers of that 
humanity itself? If it came from without, how was 
it that a pure will with no evil habit or tendency 
could receive or adopt the evil of temptation? 
Where is the bridge by which a nature can pass 
over from innocence to guilt ? All these are ques- 
tions without answers, and in their doubt and dark- 
ness looms up the great " Mystery of Iniquity." 

And this which is true in general history is re- 
peated in the history of each single life. How does 
a ncAV responsible immortal get the taint of sin? 
How is it that every being born into the Avoiid, 
without exception, born sinless, gets the evil habit 
into him and begins to sin ? The fact is there — 
written clear as daylight whenever man has lived 
and sinned. But the explanation is not found 
yet. We talk to one another about '^ original sin," 
as if that explained it. Well, what do we mean by 
"• original sin " ? Not surely that each being comes 
into the world guilty, already bearing the burden of 
responsible sin. If that were so, every infant dying 
before the age of conscious action must go to ever- 
lasting punishment, which horrible theology, I think, 



6 THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. 

nobody holds to-day. Original sin means some sort 
of tendency or possibility of sinfulness. I take it to 
express nothing more than something vague and 
indefinite — it does not say what — something in 
man which makes it certain that as he grows up into 
manhood he shall grow up into transgression ; 
and that you see is only the statement of the same 
'' Mystery of Iniquity " in other words. 

There is something oppressive, something terrible, 
in this great mysterious presence of sin right in 
our midst, so that nothing goes on save in its 
shadow, — no state is formed, no family grows up, no 
social compact is organized, no character matures 
without its blighting mixture. Right in our midst, 
and yet no voice of man or God is opened to tell us 
how it came here. The Gospel does not tell us. 
The Gospel finds it here, deals with it, does not 
explain it. It stands here shading all life, tainting 
all action, the great unread, terrible " Mystery of 
Iniquity." 

My brethren, with such a shadow on the world, 
how dare we live the lives we do ? I do not say it 
ought to make us miserable, sad, or gloomy. I do 
not say it ought to crush us and dishearten us ; but 
surely it ought to make us earnest, to put into our 
lives something of that quality, call it awe, or 
reverence, or solemnity, — the Bible groups it into 
its great word " Fear." That quality which should 
banish mere trifling and nonsense to the winds. It 
ouglit to make us sober — a happy soberness, but 
yet a sober happiness. It ought to make it dreadful 
for us to think of the lives that half of us are 



THE MYSTEKY OF INIQUITY. 7 

living, dancing and singing and idling in a world on 
which so vast a mystery abides. It ought to make 
us afraid of the miserable frivolity that trifles up 
to the very door of Lent, — and then wearies over its 
prayer-book and its church-going till the Easter door 
shall open to let it out into its butterfly life again. 

2. From this mystery which belongs to the very 
presence of sin on earth, I pass on now to speak of 
some of the mysteries which belong to its special 
operations. Remember throughout our definition of 
a mystery. 

Is there not something very mysterious in the per- 
vasiveness and inveteracy of sin as compared with 
goodness ? Look at it. We believe in goodness 
as the superior power. We hold that wherever they 
are brought to a fair struggle, goodness as the su- 
perior power must prevail. We look for the day 
whose signs we think Ave see already when '' the 
might with the right and the truth shall be." 
This is our creed drawn from the nature of the 
things themselves. And all our observation of the 
larger experience of the world proves our creed 
true. The history of human life shows everywhere 
this gradual assertion of the victory of right over 
wrong. Civilization everywhere encroaches upon bar- 
barism, order on disorder, religion upon heathenism, 
purity upon corruption. Slowly, surely, serenely, 
the banners of God everywhere, with His light upon 
them, press forward, and the dark masses of God's 
enemies fall back before them. We believe in this 
steady gain. Truth is stronger than error, mercy 
than cruelty, love than hate ; and yet with this 



8 THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. 

great creed I think few things are more bewildering 
than the way in which, in special cases, the evil is al- 
ways seeming to be more pervasive and powerfnl 
than the good. We all feel as if as soon as there is 
one bad spot in a man's life there were more chance 
of the life becoming all bad, than with one good 
spot of the whole life being filled with goodness. It 
is almost an instinctive feeling. You take a poor 
miserable reprobate, one of those men who seem to 
have no goodness left in them, an outcast, an ac- 
cepted bad man. Suppose some day some sign of 
a better spirit makes itself seen in him ; his life is 
a long lie, but somewhere in it an impulse of truth 
surprises you ; his life is black with impurity, but 
at some point a bright and better light breaks in. 
What do you say of him? Is not that glimmer of 
good swallowed up and lost in the great general mass 
of evil ? You do not look on it as likely to come to 
anything. You expect it to go out. But now, sup- 
pose we have a good man's life, a long, bright stretch 
of goodness, clear, almost without stain ; but some- 
where in it you discern one taint, somewhere you 
find one falseness creeping in among the truth, one 
hate among the love, — at once you are distressed and 
frightened, at once you picture to yourself this bad 
spot spreading till the whole is bad. One bad spot 
seems so much more likely to taint, than one good 
spot does to purify the whole. 

And so of the pervasive power of sin among masses 
of men. We send one good man into a crowd of 
villains and we vaguely and dimly hope that he may 
make them better. We send one villain into a com- 



THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. 9 

pany of saints and begin to look at once to see stains 
on their robes and tarnish on their crowns. You send 
your boy to college, and if he goes there pure you 
hardly expect him to purify the air about him. You 
only ask, ^vith trembling lips, of God, that he him- 
self be not defiled. But you hear of your neighbor's 
bad boy that has gone there, and in a moment you see 
the badness that there is in him spreading itself and 
taking root in others. I think we all can recognize 
this feeling. Vice" is a hardy plant. Let it alone 
and it will grow on of itself. Virtue is a delicate 
and fi'agile thing, and needs all the care and f)etting 
it can get. Put this along with our firm belief in 
the essential superiority and final victory of good- 
ness, and it certainly forces on us a conviction of the 
subtlety and energy of the power of evil, and is 
one of the most perplexing illustrations of the 
''Mystery of Iniquity." 

3. I ask you again to notice the mysterious pev- 
sonalness with which sin presents itself as a temi^ter 
to the hearts of men. This is what we usually 
hear stated as the doctrine of ''besetting sins." 
The idea is that every nature is by its constitution 
specially liable to certain forms of transgression, and 
that opportunities and inducements to transgress al- 
ways multiply themselves on tliat side of the nature 
which is most inclined to yield. I know how easy it 
is for a man to imagine something of this kind, and 
to suppose, because the attacks which come to him on 
his weaker side give him the most trouble, therefore 
there are the most of them ; but still, I think we 
have all felt the truth of the personal malignity of 



10 THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. 

sin too often not to recognize its truth. Why is it 
that he who is most liable to pride, has such contin- 
ual incitements to an overweaning vanity ? Why is it 
that the poor inebriate trying to give up his drink, 
finds the whole world full of beckoning fingers and 
tempting voices that keep calling back again his dj- 
ing passions into life. To the light and over-frivo- 
lous character all nature shapes itself into a chorus 
and sings siren songs to scare incipient thoughtful- 
ness away. To the morose and bitter nature all life 
gathers itself uj) gloriously to deepen and darken th 
wicked dreariness of his existence. We get the ic 
of a man's being personally persecuted by sin. A man 
is proud, and everything seems to minister to his 
pride. He is rich, prosperous ; everything goes well 
with him. Some day he loses it all. He is cast 
down into humility and poverty. What then ? Does 
his pride forsake him ? In some form or other you 
see the man still proud of his very humility and pov- 
erty. His " besetting sin " has hunted him out and 
found him down in the depths. It is like nothing 
but the old Greek stories of the implacable furies 
that gave their victims no rest till they had chased 
them into their graves. What one of us sits here to- 
day and does not know his own besetting sin? Why 
is it that everywhere one of us goes, the lips shape 
themselves to lie ; wherever another goes, the limbs 
sink down into sloth and self-indulgence; whatever 
turn another takes, the air burns hot with passion 
which he cannot escape ? It is this personality of 
sin, tills gradual conviction that certain sins are our 
sins, set apart, set down to us — it is thio w^hich gives 



THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. 11 

the sense of helplessness to our condition. We get 
at last to settling down and shaping our lives to it, 
and making up our minds that there is no hope for 
us, but that this one bad thing we are delivered to 
do. Consciously or unconsciously we make for it a 
standard of responsibility different from that which 
we have for all otlier acts. 

And not only on our weakest points, but at our 
weakest times does the special attack always seem to 
come. This is still more mysterious. We read of 
^%rist, that He went up into the wilderness, and 
'•'^Mien He was an hungered," the devil came to Him. 
So it is always. The offer of stones turned into bread 
comes ^' when we are an hungered." Why is it that 
just when we are most tried in good works, the road 
smooths itself and the banks grow green, and we are 
tempted to*lie down in slothfulness ? Why is it that 
just when we are poorest, and so find the readiest 
excuses for meanness, the sin of meanness comes ; 
just when we are sore with some insult or blow, an- 
other always comes and makes us sin with angry 
words ; just at the moment of all moments when 
some disappointment has shaken our faith in all 
truth and honor, comes a lie. into our lips and insists 
on being told ? It is very startling and bewildering 
sometimes to find the chance of sin occurring just 
when we are weakest to resist it. Surely in this 
personalness and timeliness of temptation is one of 
the most remarkable features of the " Mystery of In- 
iquity." 

Now take yet another point in the mysteriousness 
of sin — its power of self-disguise. There is some- 



12 THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. 

thing encouraging and something disheartening in 
the way in wliich sin is constantly inducing us to 
commit it, by presenting itself to us as something 
different from what it really is. It is disheartening, 
because there is no sin which people, keeping the 
dread of it all the time before their own consciences, 
no sin so heinous that people may not be brought to 
commit it ; and yet it is encouraging to see that 
people do need to have vice present itself to them 
under the cloak of virtue before they will heartily 
give up to it their allegiance. Is it not wonderful 
to see how few sins in this world are done flatly, 
fairly, blankly, as sins ? We carry our consciences by 
side attacks, by elaborate strategies and artifices. 
We almost never charge up in the face of our sense 
of right and take it by assault. It is a very rare 
thing, I think, much rarer than we are often ready 
to suppose, for a man to say to himself, this thing 
is bad, bad and not good, certainly and neces- 
sarily and nothing but bad, and yet I w411 do it. 
Go and sit down by the murderer in his cell, by the 
traitor in his camp, stand with the persecutor before 
his burning victim, look into the hot heart of the 
adulterer or the blasphemer, tie the liar down to 
give an account of the disgraceful falsehood he has 
uttered, and every one of them has his fair mask to 
spread before the face of the iniquity to which he 
has yielded himself. Covetousness dresses itself in 
the decent robes of prudence, idleness calls itself 
innocence, prodigality goes garbed as generosity, 
they all masquerade through society and trap the 
souls of men. This is the meanino^ of the conviction 



THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. 13 

of sin, this is what the Gospel does, — it strips the 
false shows off, and it is then, when men see their 
lives as what they are, when the inner nature of acts 
writes out their true titles on their foreheads ; then 
that that terrible humiliation comes of which we hear 
the subjects of the Gospel speak ; then that some 
strong men stand and tremble like children before 
the barrenness and wickedness of their whole lives, 
and others fall and press their faces in the dust to 
shut out the reproaching sight, and cry out before 
their convicted selves their wild " unclean I un- 
clean!" 

One cannot stand before a crowd of his fellow-men, 
and not think what would come to pass if the Gospel 
in one sudden moment did its work for all of them. 
O we are self-complacent as we sit and look into 
one another's faces here to-day ! We have our sins 
here all decently labelled, all decently clad. What 
if He came, the Spirit of all truth, and wiped out 
every false name and wrote up every true one ! We 
tremble to think of what these walls must see. 
We should not dare look up on one another's shame 
bowed down each with the supreme shamefulness of 
his own. We should leap at once into a self-abhor- 
rence like to Job's. This would turn to a Lenten 
afternoon then indeed. " Out of the deep " we 
should cry unto God together. Out of the deep of 
our honest humiliation ! Of all the mysteries of 
iniquity is there any stranger, more bewildering, than 
this — this power of self-disguise? There is no sin 
that may not be made to look like holiness, no holi- 
ness that may not be made the cloak of a sin. What 



14 THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. 

does it mean ? Is there a vice for every virtue, a 
shadow for every sunlight ? Is there an iniquity cut 
into the shape and j)ainted in the hue of every good- 
ness ; and is the power of substituting the evil for the 
good intrusted to the cunning and unscrupulous 
hands of some infernal malice? What a stran'ge as- 
sociation and correspondence between the good and 
evil it suggests ! Is it that the arch-fiend, the fallen 
angel, took with him when he fell out of the skies 
the patterns of the heavenly glory, and makes the 
curses that he sends upon the earth after their 
blessed shapes? However it may come, there is 
something fearful in having to live in the distrustful- 
ness, and confusion, and perplexity that grows out of 
this strange Mystery of Iniquity. 

These, then, I have specified as some of the mys- 
teries in the character and operations of human sin ; 
some of the phenomena whose reality we are com- 
pelled to recognize, but whose methods and means it 
is totally out of our power to understand. If we 
tried to generalize them, and find out thus something 
of tlie real nature of sinfulness, I do not think it 
would be hard to read one general character in all 
these various workings. They all show that wonder- 
ful activity, mobility, facility, malignity, which we 
always conceive of as belonging only to a person- 
ality. We have almost been driven to a personal 
phraseology in speaking of them. When we see 
some force working its Avay with restless energy 
against the sluggishness of higher forces, choosing its 
persons and points of attack, choosing its times of 
action with some marvellous discrimination, putting 



THE ]VIYSTEKY OF INTQUTTY. 15 

on, when need demands it, the cloak and mask of a 
diviner power, malignantly, dexterously, with such 
strange choice and ingenuity doing its work, what 
better conception can we form of it than that wdiich 
the sublime language of the Scripture gives us of a 
personal evil, a Satan, a bad spirit set to the endless 
work of thwarting God and ruining the hope of man! 
Reason may find what difficulties she will in the doc- 
trine of a personal Satan, but she has yet to harmo- 
nize and arrange, under any other idea, the phenom- 
ena of human sin. Till she does this, there stands 
forth this personal '' INIystery of Iniquity," Avhich 
Paul, with a sublime realism, sees working his devil- 
ish schemes in personal freedom and power among 
the sons of men. 

We have spoken thus of the mysteriousness of sin 
in its origin and operations. It would be a cruel, a 
false, and an unchristian sermon if I closed without 
telling you of the diviner mystery in which human 
iniquity finds its cure. The first thought round 
which the grand wonder of the atonement grows 
into shape is this thought of sin as a real live thing 
standing fortli to be fought wdth, to be conquered, 
to be killed. Not of a mere moral weakness to 
be strengthened, or an intellectual emptiness to be 
filled, but of an enmity to be slain, a giant to be sub- 
dued. To meet that enmity, to slay that giant, 
Christ comes forth with his wonderful nature. He 
undertakes a distinct and dreadful strugefle. The 
sublime conflict goes on between Christ and Satan, 
in a region apart from, above, and separate from 
man. We see its outward manifestation in the 



16 THE iSLVSTERY OF INIQUITY. 

agony of the cross. We see, but do not comprehend 
even that. All the deeper battle goes on out of our 
sight. We know not how it fares till the word of 
God comes to tell us that the victory is won by our Re- 
deemer, and that Satan is trodden into death by the 
dying Christ. Of all the Mystery of Iniquity, where 
is the Mystery like this ? You see how true a mys- 
tery it is. Nothing but tlie fact we know. Tliat we 
know perfectly. - That shining, splendid fact, that 
gracious, glorious fact — the fact of the Lord's vic- 
tory and of Satan's fall — stands forth so clear that 
none can doubt it. It takes its place as the one cer- 
tain, central fact of hope. By it the living live, by 
it the dying die ; in it the glorified rejoice forever. 
But who shall go behind the fact, and tell its 
method? Who shall say how, why, where, that all- 
availing victory was won ? Only the divine and 
human Christ met the power of sin and conquered 
it ; and every human being in that triumph of the 
one great humanity stood possibly victor over his 
mighty and malicious foe. 

O wondrous mystery ! Who asks to know the 
way ? Who does not take the glorious truth and 
fasten desperate hands upon it, and draw himself up 
by it into hope ? Who will not stand content and 
let the clouds cover the awful mystery of his great 
Master's struggle, so long as out of the clouds he 
hears the assuring voice of God : " This is my be- 
loved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Whosoever 
Cometh unto me by him shall not perish, but shall 
have everlasting life '"? 

The Mystery of Iniquity ! This is the lesson of 



THE ]N[YSTERY OF INIQUITY. 17 

all that we have said to-day, — that we are living in 
the midst of mysterious forces leagued against our 
souls, — that our enemy is mysterious, is superhu- 
man. Mysterious and superhuman, then, must be 
our safety and defence. Our foe is a spirit. A 
higher spirit, then, even the Holy Spirit of God, must 
be our champion. " We wrestle not against flesh 
and blood, but against principalities, against powers, 
against the rulers of the darkness of this w^orld, 
against spiritual wickedness in high places." Where- 
fore we must take unto ourselves the whole armor 
of God. Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of 
His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that we 
may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, 
and having done all, to stand. 



II. 

THE VALLEY OF BACA. 

•' Whcr passing" through the valley of Baca make it a well; the 
vain also filleth the pools.'^ — ^ Psalms Ixxxiv, 6. 

The- prayer-book versian of these words, you will 
remember, is a little different : '' Who going through 
the vale of misery use it for a well ; and the pools 
are filled with water." Let us try to keep both 
versions in mhid while we are speaking of it. 

The verse gathers its beauty from the circum- 
stances of the Psalm. It is drawn out of the richness 
of that picture-land of Palestine. The more we 
read the Psalms, and indeed all the Bible, we are 
impressed with the remarkable value which belongs 
to the Holy Land as representing in a continual map 
or picture not merely the localities of certain historical 
events, but also by a higher association the geography 
of the spiritual life of man and the relations of spirit- 
ual truths to one another. The sacred names have 
passed from being merely the titles of hills and rivers 
and cities, and belong to principles and moral verities. 
In the Avorld's great heart there will forever be a 
holy land besides that to which pilgrims travel half- 
way round the globe. Though tlie historic land 
which lies between the Mediterranean sea and the 
Asiatic deserts should be blotted from the surface of 



THE VALLEY OF BACA. 19 

the earth to-morrow; though some strange miracle 
should roll the whole rough surface of the country 
smooth, and mix in indistinguishable confusion hill 
and valley, upland and river-bed, still there would be 
eternally a holy land. Still all over the world, where- 
ever sacred associations had transfiocured the old 
names, the Jordan would roll down its rocky bed 
to the Dead sea; still the hills would stand about 
Jerusalem ; still the desert would open between 
Judea and Galilee ; still Egypt must mean cap- 
tivity, and the Red sea deliverance, and Gilgal provi- 
dence, and Bethany domestic piety, and Calvary 
redeeming love, — although the visible places to 
which those names belong should cease to be 'forever. 
We little know how much we owe to this eternal 
picture drawn in the hearts of men, this mapped-out 
Palestine of the inner life. 

Our text is one of the passages which have con- 
tributed to draw this picture. '' Who passing 
throuofh the vale of Baca use it for a well." Stu- 
dents have not been able to identify and locate the 
valley Baca, but it evidently refers either generally 
or specially to those diiiicult ravines which the 
people had to cross in coming up to Jerusalem to 
the feasts. The Psalm was probably wiitten by 
David at some time when he was kept in exile and 
could not go up to Jerusalem. It is the yearning of 
a loving and devoted heart for the privilege of 
worship. '• O how amiable are thy dwellings, thou 
Lord of hosts. My soul hath a desire and longing 
to enter into the courts of the Lord ; my heart and 
my flesh rejoice in the living God. Yea, the sparrow 



20 THE VALLEY OF BACA. 

hath found her an house and the swallow a nest 
where she may lay her ^^oung, even thy altars, O 
Lord of hosts, my King and my God." Then mount- 
ing up to the height of his sorrow (that height from 
which so often the best and widest visions come to 
men) a vision comes to him. He sees the multitude, 
whom he may not join, going up to worship. He 
Avatches their winding line from liill to hill as they 
draw nearer to Jerusalem. '' Blessed is the man in 
whose heart are thy ways, who going through the 
vale of miser}^ use it for a well; and the pools are 
filled with water. They will go from strength to 
strength," he cries, exulting in their progress, ''and 
unto the God of gods appeareth every one of them 
in Zion." Then he falls back upon his own need, 
" O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer, hearken, O 
God of Jacob. I had rather be a door-keeper in the 
house of my God than to dwell in the tents of un- 
godliness." 

The lesson of the vale of Baca, the vale of misery, 
evidently is, the turning of sorrow into joy. Let 
us try to read the parable and understand it. 
Kotice, then, it is the turning of sorrow into joy; 
the turning into, not merely the supplanting, the 
succeeding of sorrow by joy. There are two theories 
about this thiug : One we may call tlie theory 
of compensation, the other the theory of transfor- 
mation. ■ The compensation theory is the common- 
est, the one most easily and so most generally 
understood. Even Christians are found continually 
confusing it with and so substituting it for the higher 
and better truth. Its idea is that the world is full of 



THE VALLEY^ OF BACA. 21 

evil and discomfort, and that discomfort is to be borne 
only by the assurance that it is not universal or per- 
joetual, that it is varied and mixed up with pleasure, 
and that if we can only set our lips tight and walk on 
over the sorrow Ave must come to the happiness by 
and by. We are told that if it storms to-day the sun 
Avill be out to-morrow ; if this week's speculation 
fails, the market is still open and lo-morrow's invest- 
ment or the next day's or the next day's may suc- 
ceed ; if our country is down in the depths of 
trial, another somewhere else is sunning itself on the 
summit of success. There is this poise and balance 
and make-up all through life. This is a favorite doc- 
trine of our philosophy. I do not find it anywhere 
more strikingly stated than in these words of Emer- 
son : ^'Polarity, or action and reaction," he declares, 
'' we meet in every part of nature, in darkness and 
light ; in heat and cold ; in the ebb and flow of 
waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and 
expiration cf plants and animals ; in the systole 
and diastole of the heart ; in the undulations of 
fluids and of sound; in the centrifugal and centrip- 
etal gravity ; in electricity, galvanism, and chemi- 
cal aflinity. If the south attracts, the north repels. 
To empty here you must condense there. An inevi- 
table dualism bisects nature so that each thing is a 
half, and suggests another thing to make it whole ; 
as, spirit, matter ; man, woman ; odd, even; subjective, 
objective; in, out ; upper, under; motion, rest; j^ea, 
nay." This endless up and down is the law which 
this philosophy assumes to be the great consoler. 
And far-sighted faith, hunted and tried by suffer- 



22 THE VALLEV OF BACA. 

iiig, carries this philosophy out far beyond the limits 
of this world. To how many Christians Heaven and 
the eternal happiness present themselves under the 
guise of this compensation theory. This world is the 
great down. The next world is to be the great up 
which is to make it good. The bad prosper here, the 
good prosper there. The Christian suffers now to be 
rewarded then. This world is miserable, we must 
wait for our happiness, and struggle on with tight lips 
and torn feet to find it m the next. The deeper the 
misery, the more complete the future joy. It would 
be easy to point out passages in Scripture which seem 
to confirm this doctrine ; passages in which the su- 
perior bliss of the perfect life casts the miniature ex- 
jjeriences of this state of being into a darkened shade ; 
but he who accepts it as the general rule of existence 
has to do it against the general tone of the Bible and 
the general verdict of experience, both of Avhich 
declare the possibility of happiness this side of the 
grave. It is the idea under whose strange tyranny 
some very earnest and conscientious souls have been 
made morbidly miserable because, forsooth, they 
could not help being happy. This Avould be the 
idea under Avliich the pilgrim through the vale of 
Baca would not turn it into a well, but only be kept 
up through it by far-off visions of the waters of sal- 
vation which, when he got to Jerusalem, he should 
find flowing out of the mount of God. It would 
make earth not a foretaste, an earnest, but only a dis- 
cipline of Heaven. Whatever truth there may be in 
it, it evidently is not the whole or tlie best truth. 
Svach a faith, with all honor to its exaltedness and 



THE VALLEY OF BACA. 23 

nobleness, be it said, resembles that over far-sighted- 
ness Avhich is a disease, not because it sees things afar 
off, but because it sees only things afar off and is 
blind to the beauties and helps that lie about its feet. 

Souls of less intense faith, who cannot carry the 
doctrine of compensation into the next life, keep it 
and try to use it in this. Nothing*is more sad, as it 
seems to me, than the way in which we comfort our- 
selves and one another for our sorrows, by vague, 
unrealized promises that sorrow cannot last forever. 

We conceive of life as a great swinging sphere 
which must forever run a vast orbit, doomed to per- 
petual change, and so sure by and by to sweep into 
the sunlight, if we can only keep alive and wait. It 
is a forlorn and miserable comfort. It loses all the 
certainty and personal graciousness of Christianity. 
There is no piety about it. No man can get into 
the habit of thus comforting himself every day and 
seeming to be satisfied with this comfort, and yet 
keep a real faith in a real, constant, unchanging, in- 
finite, good God ; and yet how common it is and how 
pious we count it. We sing it into songs that sound 
almost religious, and feel as if we were comforted and 
resigned when their barren words fall on us. 

**Be still, sad heart, and cease repining, 
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining. 
Thy fate is the common fate of all, 
Into each life some rain must fall, 
Some days must be dark and dreary." 

That means, (if it be not going too far to seek a 
meaning in whkt is perhaps meant for mere sentimen- 



24 THE VALLEY OF BACA. 

tality,) that there is nothing to do on rainy days but 
to sit still and be drenched till it clears up. It is the 
theory of compensation. There is so much rain to 
fall, and if it did not fall to-day it would to-morrow; 
having fallen to-day, to-morrow Ave shall have the 
sun. There is so much suffering to suffer. If we 
get through with it this year, the more certainly next 
year will rise clear. I presume it is by no means^ 
certain that that is true in physics, it certainly is 
false in morals. 

Nor can this barren consolation ever give anything 
that is worthy to be called patience or resignation. 
Patience and resignation are both calm and cheer- 
ful. This Avill be either the dogged and sullen yield- 
ing of a brute to a burden he cannot escape (losing 
cheerfulness), or else the reckless excitement of a 
gambler kept alive by the perpetual and unreliable 
alternation, losing calmness. These travellers through 
the vale of Baca have not even the distant vision of 
the holy city to inspire them. They can only plod 
along the dusty way in the vague hope that some 
oasis Avill appear where they can get a shadow and 
a drink. Such is the comfortless comfort that we 
give and take. 

This is the theory of compensations. Now see 
how different it is from this other theory of transfor- 
mations. David's pilgrims going through the A^ale of 
misery '•'- use it " for a Avell. They Avere looking for- 
Avard to Jerusalem. Their hearts leaped, as every 
traveller's must A\dien any greener spot promised 
them a richer resting-place ; but their life Avas not 
one altogether of the future, not kept distressed and 



THE VALLEY OF BACA. 25 

anxious with uneasy alternations. They made the 
vale itself a well. It was not simply a sorrow that 
was succeeded by joy, not merely a peace promised 
and looked for and waited for, it was a peace found. 
When they grew thirsty they looked, not merely far- 
ther on into the heart of the future, but deeper down 
into the bosom of the present. 

It seems to me the very drawing of this picture 
must describe to many a soul its own unspoken need, 
and make it recognize it. '' Yes, that is what I want. 
Heaven is glorious, but it is far away. To-morrow 
may be all steeped in sunshine ; but meanwhile to- 
day is dark. There surely must be something better 
to do than to sit down and wait. What is it ?" We 
all feel that a religion which lives onh^ on the future, 
dwells only in the future, is not a whole, cannot be a 
wholly efficient faith. What the world needs is pres- 
ent work, and what all men need are present work- 
ing conditions, a present life. Hope is a splendid 
power, but I can hope fully, because I can hope in- 
telligently, only as I already taste some intimation 
of the thing I hope for. I can strive after the 
streams of Zion only as I strengthen myself out of 
the wells of Baca. 

If we look, then, to see if this doctrine of transfor- 
mation be possible, it starts out of that word '' use." 
Things are what they are used for. So it is all over 
nature. There stands a tree in the forest. What is 
it — a tree ? Yes, but a tree only as material. It is, 
in possibility, countless things. What it shall be, in 
reality, depends ux)on the superior will that uses it. 
The savage comes with his use, and the tree is a 



26 THE VALLEY OF BACA. 

canoe and floats upon the river. The builder comes 
with his need, and the tree is a wall of planks and 
shields a house. The physician comes with his use, 
and the tree-bark becomes a medicine and cures the 
sick. The farmer comes with his use, and the tree 
turns into a roaring fire to keep the winter out at his 
door. So of all things. The artist uses a stone, 
and it is a statue ; the mason uses a stone, and it is a 
doorstep. And beyond mere nature. See how we use 
men. We are each other's raw material. I make you 
up in some shape into my life, and 5^ou in some way 
make me up into yours. But what man is of so 
fixed a character that he can be made up only into 
one invariable thing ? Each man makes of his 
neighbor that for which he uses him. Why is it that 
two men both know and use one other man of rich 
and gracious nature, and one gathers and makes 
out of him nothing but env}^ and jealousy, and dis- 
content, while the other shapes into his own life a 
largeness, and sweetness, and fineness, like that with 
which he has to deal? Whj^, except that the de- 
termining power lies finally, not in the one identical 
character of the man who is used, but in the two dif- 
ferent natures of the men who use him? So of all in- 
fluences and motives. The same educations wall and 
press upon two lives. One rises on them into great- 
ness, the other drags them down upon it and is 
crushed beneath them into ruin. So, go to Heaven. 
The same eternal glory feeds two heavenly spirits ; 
the same great throne looks down in loving author- 
ity on both. Thej^ tread together the same glassy 
streets; they wait together for the same far-reaching 



THE VALLEY OF BACA. 27 

messages ; they bend together, looking down into a 
wisdom they both crave to fathom. Why is it that 
Gabriel stands unstained out of all the glory, gather- 
ing strength and grace, while his brother Lucifer falls 
from his side, full of his hate, and treason, and re- 
venge? We need not go to angels. How is it that 
men use God and make of him such different things 
grow by their use of him to saints or devils ? How is 
it that the Pharisee and Publican came down the 
same temple steps, one cold, and proud, and bitter, 
and the other with his heart full of tenderness, and 
gratitude, and humblest charity? 

As the world goes on and man becomes a more 
complete being, the truth that comes out more and 
more must be this of the regal importance of the 
using moral force. Man the savage is ruled by things, 
— rivers, hills, forests, — they make of him what 
their own tendencies suggest ; and on the other hand, 
man the citizen, man civilized, rules things, makes of 
them what he pleases. Man the child is obedient 
and plastic ; man the man is authoritative and de- 
cisive. Surely there is no picture in history so strik- 
ing and sublime as that which is the one picture of all 
history : the soul of man which seemed at first so in- 
significant, so weak a thing among all these stupen- 
dous things and forces, slowly, surely, going up into its 
own place, taking its stand in the very central midst 
of all of them, moving them all, making them all be 
what it will, deciding their nature by their use. 

Now, I said that in this truth lies the key to the 
difference between the doctrine of compensations 
and the doctrine of transformations. The mere com- 



28 THE VALLEY OF BACA. 

pensatioii theory forgets this regal position of the 
human life. It puts humanity in the power of 
things. Man must be carried where things carry 
him, and trust to their continual changes to float him 
off to-morrow, if they ground him perchance to-day. 
''Nay," says the Christain doctrine of transformations, 
" things are in the power of man ; as he uses them so 
they are." As God said to Adam about the beasts, 
" Whatsoever thou callest each, that is his name.'' 
In him, the user, rests the real nature of the things 
he uses. They have no invariable fixed nature apart 
from him. 

Now, let this great user man, this one moral force, 
be called upon to go down into the valley of Baca, 
into the vale of misery. He finds there all the cir- 
cumstances of suffering, poverty, sickness, bereave- 
ment, sin itself ; what then, these are things and he 
is man. They are what he is. Let him rule them, 
not be ruled by them. Let him take down there a 
religious, trustful nature, a pious, cheerful heart, and 
there is more promised than just that his cheerful 
piety shall be able to support him through ; he shall 
exercise liis human right of ruling and of using 
liiese, and his cheerful, trustful heart shall come out 
with a more perfect joy and a more certain faith than 
he had carried in. He shall not come out half-dead 
with thirst, just able to drag himself up to the foun- 
tain at the end, but it shall be as David so beautifully 
says, " He shall drink of the brook in the way, there- 
fore shall he lift up his head." 

This, then, is the Christian economy of suffering; 
this is the high theory of transmutation. In a world 



THE VALLEY OF BACA. 29 

full of sorrow and distress how noble, how benig- 
nant an economy it is I Our human instinct craves 
something like it. AVe cannot think complacently 
of this life or any part of this life as something just 
to be endured, to be got through with, as a prelimi- 
nary to some unknown happiness in store beyond. 
We long for a present religion, a present strength, a 
present joy, a present God, and we find them all, not 
in any weak ignoring of the misery of life, but in the 
way in which that misery may become instinct with 
happiness, by the sublime mercy of " the vale of 
Baca." 

If we go on, then, a little farther to try to find 
out something about the methods of this economy of 
transformation, how it is that suffering is not merely 
succeeded by but turned into joy, I suppose the 
one great answer that includes all otliers must be 
this : that suffering contains the elements of the 
highest happiness because it involves the condition 
of weakness, of helplessness, of dependence. If the 
condition for which man was made was a religious 
condition, that is to say a related, a bound up, a de- 
pendent condition, then the highest human happiness 
must always come with the most complete con- 
formity to that first idea of human life. If depend- 
ence, then, be happiness, independence, (which if you 
take the word apart means just the same as irrelig- 
ion.) independence of God, self-sufficiency, must be 
unhappiness. And then since suffering in all its 
various departments is the breaking up of self-suffi- 
ciency, of self-confidence, is it not evident at once 
that rightly used it may be the setting free of the 



30 THE VALLEY OF BACA. 

human soul from an unnatural and forced condition, 
into its natural, regular, intended, and so happiest 
life ? It is simply the conviction of weakness in one's 
self letting a man free to return to the strength in 
which he belongs. It matters not what the weakness 
be, w^hether the breaking of a leg, so that the man 
who walked and earned his bread yesterday has to lie 
still and be fed to-day. Or the death of a friend, so 
that he who used to lean on a strong shoulder as he 
walked feels for it now in vain. Or the disproving 
of a favorite proposition, so that where we used to 
tread firm on what Ave thought was certainty, we now 
go cautiously and tiptoe over doubt. Anything in 
body, brain, or heart that gets that idea of insuffi- 
ciency home to us, may set us to digging beneath the 
self-surface of our vale of misery to find the God 
below for whom the thirsty soul was made. 

There is something very beautiful to me in the 
truth that suffering, rightly used, is not a cramping, 
binding, restricting of the human soul, but a setting 
of it free. It is not a violation of the natural order, 
it is only a more or less violent breaking open of 
some abnormal state that the natural order may be 
resumed. It is the opening of a cage door. It is the 
breaking in of a prison wall. This is the thought of 
those fine old lines of an early English poet : 

" The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made. 
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become 
As they draw near to their eternal home." 

Oh, how many battered cottages have thus let 
in the light ! How many broken bodies have set 



THE VALLEY OF BACA. ' 31 

their souls free, and how many shattered homes 
have let the men and women who sat m darkness 
ill them see the great light of a present God ! 
" Stronger by weakness ! " " Who passing through 
the vale of misery use it for a well." 

We have spoken thus of irresponsible suffering 
only; but in a far nobler way it is true of the re- 
sponsible suffering which comes of sin. This is 
the hardest to believe ; but yet, my dear friends, 
this is Avhat we need to believe most of all. Be- 
yond all suffering which comes by natural dispen- 
sation or by human weakness there is another 
which exceeds them all. A man loses his friend 
and he is sorry, he loses his property and he is 
crushed, he loses his health and he almost gives 
up ; hut there is a j'et untasted woe of which 
that man knows nothing yet. With all his wading 
through deep waters, there is a suffering in which 
he has not yet dipped his foot. Let that same man 
find himself a sinner ; let him wake up and see 
how his sin has set him far away from God ; let 
him feel how antagonistic his whole life is to holi- 
ness ; let him stand guilty, guilty, without a 
plea, without a hope, just with his stained and 
frightened soul naked before the eye of God, 
and then in the conviction of sin, then he has 
found what suffering is — sorrow ! The other sor- 
rows of his life all fade back out of sight and this 
is left alone. He walks the valley of his misery 
and all is dark. And can this valley too break 
forth in wells ? Can these dry pools be filled with 
water? Tell me, O Christians, you who out of 



32 ' THE VALLEY OF BACA. 

the conviction of your sinfulness have found a 
Saviour from your sin, — tell me, all ye who, bowed 
down in the dust in the humiliation of your 
worthlessness, have heard there, with your face 
close to the ground, what you could never hear 
wdiile you stood upright, the streams of pardon 
running sweet music down below, — tell me, is 
not the well of richest joy right here in the midst 
of the valley of completest sorrow ; where sin 
abounded does not grace much more abound? 

my dear brethren, if any of you now are going 
through that valley, may He who led you there 
teach you how to " use it for a well." Every step 
as you go through it may you hear a voice beside 
you crying, " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye 
to the fountain." 

It would be interesting to trace out also, as an ele- 
ment in this economy of transmutation, the way in 
which a man may get joy out of suffering by being 
brought through suffering into a deeper knowledge 
of the nature and purpose of God. Prosperity, as 
we have seen, is unconscious of God. Suffering, 
whether it will or no, has to be conscious of him. 
And if there be a perfectly unselfish joy, one entirely 
and perfectlj^ pure, one in which the human faculty 
of joyfulness reaches its highest exaltation, it must 
be the earnest delight with w^hich a man who loves 
God puts himself aside and is utterly happy in 
watching^ and seeino" what God is and how he works. 

1 have seen a man whom the world called a fearful 
sufferer living delightful days in this high study of 
the ways of God. Day by day his Maker took some 



THE VALLEY OF BACA. 33 

strength out of his life, unstrung some nerve, put 
some pain in ; but the suffering of a decaying body was 
so far surpassed by the rare joy of feeling his Maker's 
hands busy on the body and tlie spirit he had made, 
and of studying his wondrous ways of working, that 
his hours of sickness were the happiest that he had 
ever lived. He saw God glorifying himself, and was 
abundantly content ; that was the well of which he 
drank. 

" Who passing through the vale of Baca make it a 
well; the rain also filleth the pools." How beauti- 
fully the two clauses tell of the responsive positions 
of God and the human soul in suffering ! It is a 
meeting of water from below and water from above. 
The wells fill themselves out of the ground and the 
rain comes from the sky into the pools ; yet both 
from the same original source, Never so much as in 
suffering does the divinity which ^God gave to man 
come out and show itself to meet the new divinity 
which he sends down to it out of Heaven. Have you 
nev^er been struck by coming suddenly on the face of 
a man whom you had know^n long and well, but who 
since you knew him had been a sufferer either men- 
tally or bodily ; and seeing how his face had grown 
finer and nobler, so that you almost w^ere awed be- 
fore him at first ? Something had come out from him 
and something had come into him. His grossness 
had grown delicate and his brutishness gentle by his 
sorrow. And as with faces, so with characters. 

Here we must stop. The Bible calls the world a 
w^orld of sorrow ; but the same Bible tells us there is 
a way of making the vale of misery to laugh ^vith 



34 THE VALLEY OF BACA. 

springs and fountains. Remember, it is not just 
compensation, but transformation that you are to 
seek. Not Heaven yet. That looms before us al- 
Avaj^s, tempting us on ; but now the earth, with all 
its duties, sorrows, difficulties, doubts, and dangers. 
We want a faith, a truth, a grace to help us iioiv^ 
right here, where we are stumbling about, dizzied 
and fainting with our thirst. And we can have it. 
One who was man, j^et mightier than man, has 
walked the vale before us. When he walked it, he 
turned it all into a well of living w^ater. To them 
who are willing to walk in his footsteps, to keep in 
his light, the well he opened shall be forever flowing. 
Nay, it shall pass into him and fulfil there Christ's 
own words : " Whosoever drinketh of the water that 
I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that 
I shall give him shall be in him a well of water 
springing up into everlasting life.'^ 



III. 

HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 

" And the four and twenty elders fall down before Him that sat 
on the throne, and worship Him that liveth for ever and ever, and 
cast their crowns before the throne." — Revelation iv. 10. 

It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a more 
majestic picture than is presented in this fourth chap- 
ter of the Book of Revelation. The Church of 
Christ, with all her labors done and all her warfare 
over, stands at length in heaven, before the throne of 
Him whose servant she has been, and renders up her 
trust and gives all the glory back to Him. When we 
hear such a scene described in the few words of 
John's poetic vision, I think we are met with a 
strange sort of difficulty. Tlie great impression of 
the picture is so glorious that we are afraid to touch 
it with too curious fingers, to analyze its meaning 
and get at its truth. At the same time we feel sure 
that there is in it a precise and definitely shaped 
truth which is blurred to us by the very splendor of 
the poetry in which it is enveloped. We see on the 
one hand how often the whole significance of some of 
the noblest things in Scripture is lost and ruined by 
people who take hold of them witli hard, prosaic 
hands. Their poetry is necessary to their truth. 
On the other hand, we see how many of the most 



86 HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 

sacred truths of revelation float always before many 
people's eyes in a mere vague halo of mystical splen- 
dor, because they never come boldly up to them as 
Moses went up to the burning bush, to see what they 
are, and what are the laws by which they act. Shall 
we interpret the poetry of Scripture into ordinary lan- 
guage or not? No one reads the commentaries with- 
out feeling that often it would be better not to do so ; 
but no one sees how many of the false religious ideas 
and superstitions have come of an intense and dazzled, 
but blind, perception of Scripture poetry, without 
feeling how wisely it needs to be interpreted and 
studied. There is danger of mysticism and vague- 
ness, if you leave the wonderful Bible images unex- 
plained. There is danger of prosaic dulness and the 
loss of all their life and fire, if you elucidate them 
overmuch. 

It is seen everywhere. The great New Testament 
image is the cross of Christ, and any one can see how 
on the one hand the cross has become a mere object 
of vague and feeble sentiment to multitudes who 
have been touched by its beauty without trying to 
understand its meaning ; and how, on the other hand, 
it has become hard and shallow and commercial, all 
the mystery and depth and power of appeal passed out 
of it, as men have torn its sacred agony to pieces, and 
tried to account on mercantile principles for every 
pang that Jesus suffered and every mercy that His 
sufferinq; offers to the Avorld. 

111 view of all this difficulty, what shall we do ? It 
is not hard to tell what we ought to do, by every 
Scripture image and poetic description, although it 



HO:\rAGE AXD DEDICATION. 37 

may be very hard to do it. We want to draw out 
its truth without forgetting that it is poetry; we 
want to get out of it a broad and clear idea, which 
shall still keep the glow with which it burned while 
it lay still in the fire of poetic inspiration. We waut 
to leave it in heaven, and yet bring it down to earth. 
We want to understand it more, and yet feel it just 
as much. Something of this kind I w^ant to try to 
do to-da3^, w4th reference to the great apocalyptic 
image of the four and twenty elders casting their 
crowns before the throne of God. 

What is the broad idea, then, of this great spec- 
tacle? The four and twenty elders have been often 
considered to represent the Church in its two great 
series, the Jewish and the Christian orders. Twelve 
patriarchs and twelve apostles may be considered as 
representatively constituting that company who came? 
with all the- fruits and honors of successful life, to 
offer them to Him by whose great strength they had 
been won. Such an interpretation seems very likely 
to be true ; but in a yet broader way we have here 
crowned beings, those who had won some victory 
and possessed some kingship, giving the very badges 
and tokens of their victory and glory to another 
greater than themselves, casting their kingly crowns 
before the kingly throne of a royalty mightier than 
their own. I believe that the picture has that special 
reference to the relations of the Christian Church to 
its great Head ; but does it not also suggest to us 
still broader ideas which are illustrated through all 
of human history, and which find their illustrations 
constantly in all our daily life ? Those ideas seem to 



38 HOMAGE a:n^d dedication. 

me to be two. The first is the necessary homage 
which the higher natures pay to those that are higher 
than themselves, and especially to the highest of all. 
The second is the way in which every great attain- 
ment gets its best value from being dedicated to 
somebody or some purpose that is greater still. 
These two ideas I see coming up out of this picture, 
as the soul of a man looks out upon you from his 
face. I want to dwell upon them with you for a while 
this morning. I think that they can suggest for us 
a good deal about the whole nature of reverence and 
worship. 

Take, then, the first of these ideas — the necessary 
homage that high natures pay to others which are 
higher than themselves, and especially to the high- 
est of all. Here are crowned beings casting their 
crowns down at the feet of a dimly seen figure 
which sits upon a throne so much higher than they 
are. that even their crowns can only reach his feet. 
Shall we take that idea and lay it down by the ex- 
perience of ordinary life? Does reverence increase 
as men grow themselves to be more and more, 
greater and greater? Think of it first Avith reference 
to the homage that men come to pay to what is 
higher than themselves, but not the highest — not to 
God. Every strong young man starts in a true 
self-confidence. .He is the master of everything. 
Everything is to be his servant. Centred in himself, 
he seeo all other things revolving around him as if 
they were to be the ministers of his necessities. If 
he is going into politics, the country is an arena that 
has been spread abroad for the race he is to run. If 



HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 39 

he is to be an artist, the laws of the materials of art 
are but expedients to utter the beauty and sublimity 
that is in his soul. If he is going into business, the 
great adjustments of the business world are the ma- 
chinery out of which is to be wrought his fortune. 
There is no reverence in all that. Wrapped up in 
himself, the eager young aspirant has not caught 
sight of the true and regal dignity of these masters 
whom he assumes to treat as servants. But what 
comes later? Let our j^oung man grow really great 
in any one of these departments, and I take it to be 
a universal truth, a truth which all will recognize, 
that the greater he grows the more he will come to 
know that those things, which he thought to make 
servants of, are really masters, and by and by he 
will pass into a region where he is able to pay them 
the homage they deserve. The mere tyro in politics 
thinks the country is made for his ambition ; but the 
great statesman sees his country a great and venerable 
being for whom it is his privilege to work and live, 
and perhaps die. The flippant beginner in art thinks 
that all the laws of art are merely arrangements to 
help his genius into expression ; but the great artist 
is sure that the noblest task his genius can attempt 
is only to utter in visible material some of the ever- 
lasting laws of beauty. The confident young trader 
thinks the whole market made for him ; but the great 
merchant has looked wide over all the earth, and is 
proud to be a part in that great system of interlacing 
work and mutual credit that covers all the continents. 
Thus every man, the greater he grows, becomes ca- 
pable of understanding the greatness of that with 



40 HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 

which he has to deal, and so enters into the region of 
a new homage. Newton could reverence the power 
of gravitation more than the child who ignorantly 
tosses his ball into the air and sees it fall. Morse 
was more able to honor the subtle and mighty force 
of electricity than is the mere telegraph operator 
who knows nothing but the mere manipulation of his 
machine. It is a universal rule that he is a poor 
workman who does not honor and respect his work. 
A man has no right to be doing any work which, as 
he grows greater within it, does not offer him new 
views of itself to call out an ever-increasing rever- 
ence and honor. And in all the good occupations of 
life (one would like to impress it upon every young 
merchant, young meclianic, and young student whom 
he can speak to) a man's best proof of growing 
greatness in himself is a growing perception of the 
greatness and beauty of his work. 

The same is true of men. The greater a man 
grows, the more quick and ready he will be to recog- 
nize and honor another man who is his better. Here 
again there is no test so certain of w^hether a man 
has any greatness as whether he is able to pay intel- 
ligent and sincere respect to other men who have 
more than he has. There seem to be certain states 
of condition, as it were, with reference to this. 
Down at the bottom an unenterprising mortal looks 
with blank and stupid wonder at the really great 
men who stand at the top of his race. Up a little 
higher he is moved with envy and begins to dispar- 
age them; but when he comes to be great himself, he 
knows how to understand them, and yet recognizes 



HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 41 

how much they are above him. He has become ca- 
pable of truly venerating them. Only those who 
are kingly themselves can properly honor the king- 
liest. 

And then think of the worship, not merely of that 
which is higher than a man's self, but of that which 
is the highest of all — the worship of God. There 
it is supremely true that men are capable of it only 
in virtue of and in proportion to something great, 
something divine in themselves. Only those who 
have crowns to cast can do true homage before His 
throne. This seems to me to be bound up with what 
I have already said. 1 claimed — and I think you 
agreed with me — that it was the man most profi- 
cient in any profession who saw the depth and range 
of that profession best, and so reverenced it most 
deeply. It is the mere smatterer in any profession 
who thinks it slight and is contemptuous about it. 
Now, just exactly this is true of life. The more 
completely a man lives, the more largely alive he is in 
every part of him, — in brain, and heart, and hands, — 
the more completely he will comprehend the magni- 
tude of life, and stand in reverence before the Power 
that moves and governs it. The mere smatterer in 
life, the amateur in living, so to speak, with his half- 
vital movements, never realizes the immensity of ex- 
istence, the vast variety of its complications, the 
infiniteness of its privileges and its dangers, the 
range upward and the range downward, and so he 
goes on satisfied within himself, and offering no 
tribute of adoration to the Power which moves in, 
and through, and under all this world of life, which 



42 HOIVIAGE AND DEDICATION. 

he has never fathomed deep enough to find adorable. 
But this moving power of all things is God. His 
nature is what the soul finds, when tired and be- 
Avildered, like a frightened bird which has escaped 
from its own little cage, it flies through the vast ex- 
panse of life and comes to the shadow that encloses 
it. That follows then which I believe that we 
continually see. The man most thoroughly alive, he 
who lives most, will be most reverent to God. I do 
not mean that he will always hold the correctest 
ideas. The very fulness of the current of his living 
may sweep out here and there strange eccentricities 
and aberrations in his way of thinking, but he will 
be most constantly conscious of a power over him, 
from which he came, out of which streams of influ- 
ence are always flowing into him, to which he is re- 
sponsible, to which he must return. The more a 
man loves, the more he realizes the limitations in 
which all earthly affection labors, and the more 
glorious appears to him the Infinite Love. The 
more a man thinks, the more he sees how all human 
thought is but a drop of water out of the illimitable 
ocean of the thought of God. And when a true 
man puts his hand to it and bravely does an honest 
piece of work, he sees at once the beauty and the 
littleness of the work he does, and comprehends the 
glory of the perfect work of Him through whom are 
all things, and by whom are all things. Some such 
necessary connection there seems to be between the 
largest living and the completest adoration. I have 
known many scoffers, men who believed that there 
was a God, but who did not m any way prostrate 



HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 43 

themselves before Him, paid Him no homage ; some 
of them were very bright men, some of them con- 
scientious and dutiful, some of them affectionate and 
brave ; but — I do not wholly know why — there was 
something imperfect in the development of their 
humanity, as it always seemed. They were the men 
of unsymmetrical culture; the men in whom some 
one power was overgrown and the rest were sluggish; 
the men who did not impress you with largeness of 
life, but with special, almost mechanical, dexterity of 
action; the men whom you might call upon for cer- 
tain tasks which require certain skill, but whom you 
could not trust wdth that entire confidence which can 
only rest on character. In one word, they were not 
kingly men, not men who in any regal way, accord- 
ing to the old idea of a king, represented their race. 
Men with sharp, ingenious tools in their hands, but 
no crowns upon their heads. And almost every one 
of us knows, too, that in his own life there have been 
scoffing and scornful times, periods of irreverence, 
when the sacred was not sacred to us, and the vener- 
able excited in us no veneration ; times when if we 
did not scoff at God, it was not because we adored 
Him, but because the habits of decent, reverential be- 
havior were strong enough to carry us through times 
of utter selfishness, when nothing seemed great to us 
beyond ourselves; times of utter demoralization, when 
nothing was mysterious, or inspiring, or sablime. 
And what is our impression of such times? Some 
of them were the smartest periods of all our life. 
They were perhaps the times when we worked our 
hardest — our keenest, wittiest, busiest days perhaps, 



44 HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 

but not our best, not those which we should choose 
even out of our poor, stained, sordid lives, if we 
Avere required to select some Avhich should give a 
being of another race some notion of the best life of 
a man. Surely we have been our best at those times 
when we have most completely worshipped some- 
thing far better than ourselves. It is when we have 
cast our crown most humbly before God that our 
crown has been most real, that we have known that 
there Avas indeed a spark of something kingly in our 
natures. 

And then there is one other way of looking at this 
matter. Think what company you are in when you 
are most reverential and full of the spirit of worship. 
When a man is at his business on mere selfish prin- 
ciples, exercising his business shrewdness, providing 
for himself and for his family, far be it from me to 
speak with any slight of such practical good occupa- 
tion ; but yet he is not there about the highest labor, 
nor associating himself with the highest company in 
the long lines of history. So long as a man is living 
for himself and honoring himself, there is an associa- 
tion, however remote it may be, Avith all the lowest 
forms of selfishness in which men have lived; but 
the moment a man begins to live in genuine adora- 
tion of the absolute good, and Avorship God, he parts 
company from all these loAver orders of human life 
and enters into the richest and best society that earth 
possesses or ever has possessed. Think aa^io you are 
Avith in adoration. When you say to God, '' O God, 
take me, for the highest thing that I can do AAdth my- 
self is to give myself to Thee," Avhen you say that to 



HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 45 

God, humbly, but with all your heart, kneeling all 
apart in your chamber, where no one can see you, it 
is bewildering to me to think into what company yoii 
are taken instantly by that prayer of devotion. You 
sweep into the current of the best, the holiest, and 
the most richly human of our humanity, which in 
every age has dedicated itself to God. The wor- 
shippers of all the world — the Jew, the Greek, the 
Hindu, the Christian in all his various cultures, take 
you for their brother. You have part in the offering 
of Abel's altar, in the Avorship of Solomon's temple, 
in the prison talk of Socrates, in the closet adoration 
of all the saints. You are never in such company as 
when you are before God's throne offering Him your 
brightest and most precious. Yes, men are measured 
by their reverences. All human life is like the an- 
nual procession of the Jews, marching up to Jeru- 
salem, to the Holy City. The nearer we are to that 
place of supreme adoration, the nearer the purpose of 
our life is fulfilled. What do you adore, what do 
you really reverence and respect? is the real test ques- 
tion of your life. In an age which makes too little 
of reverence, let us not dare to let drop the truth 
that only that which is high can worship the highest, 
and so covet as the best crown of our existence the 
power so to know and feel that we can genuinely 
worship God. 

And now let us take the second idea which seemed 
to be in our text. That idea was, that our highest 
attainments always get their best value from being 
offered to others who are dearer to us and higher 
than ourselves. Go back to our picture again. The 



46 HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 

four and twenty elders are casting their crowns before 
the throne of Christ. Those crowns are the attain- 
ments of their lives. All that the work of grace had 
done in them, all the fruit of their long education, — 
they valued it only as thej^ might offer it to Him who 
was the object of their reverence and love. How 
clearly we are touching here upon one of the uni- 
versal experiences of men. Is it not true that we do 
all things best, when out beyond the thing that we 
are doing there stands some one whom we love and 
admire for whom the task is done ? The scholar who 
is working hard at his problem in order that some 
day he may take his triumphant solution of it in his 
hands and go to his master who gave him his first 
lessons, and say to him, " Take this, this belongs to 
you, for I never should have done it if you had not 
taught me ; " the soldier who in the midst of battle 
is inspired by the thought that if he is brave and 
conquers he will give back life to the country that 
gave life to him ; the school-boy, who, resisting a 
school temptation, is strengthened by the thought of 
father and mother at home, who have taught him to 
be true and generous, and who comes home after- 
wards and says, ''They wanted me to be mean and to 
lie, and I did not because I remembered you, and so 
it was your strength that resisted and not mine," — 
all these seem to me to be younger brethren of the 
elders casting their crowns down at the throne-steps 
of their Master; full of the same spirit, living the 
same life. 

Such influences are certainly stronger and more 
frequent than we know. We are often working in 



HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 47 

this way, with a deep reverence for others, when it 
seems as if we were doing what we do wholly for 
ourselves. A ship captain sails out on a long 
voyage, and as he goes it seems as if he carried 
all his interests and impulses shut uj) with him in 
that little ship. He finds his plenteous enjoyment 
everywhere. He revels in the problems of naviga- 
tion that his well-trained skill knows how to solve. 
He spends long nights on deck, and conquers the 
elements that seem to have marshalled all their fury 
to decree that the little ship shall not go through. 
He rules his crew. He feels the daily joy of diffi- 
culties overcome. At last he comes to the haven 
where he wants to be. There all his business crowds 
his days. He is full of intercourse with men. He 
accomplishes the purpose of his voyage. He sells 
his cargo, and with a new one shipped he sails back, 
through months of work and interest and danger, till 
he is at tlie wharf from which he sailed a year ago. 
And then — what then ? Why, he goes up on shore 
and finds out a little house where a little child, a 
mere baby-child, is living in a nurse's care, and gives 
the treasure of his voyage, all that he has earned, 
into the little hands of his unknowing child, who 
really was the single cause and inspiration of his 
toilsome voyage, and really is the reason why he 
rejoices in its success. He has not seemed — not 
even to himself — to think of her, but really she has 
been there in the bottom of his heart all the long 
time. The whole success is valuable to him because 
he may make an offering of it to her. If you doubt 
it, think how it would be if he came back and found 



48 HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 

her dead — the house empty, and only a little grave 
for him to lavish his love on. Where would be the 
value of his treasures then ? Who could wake him 
out of the bitterness of his sorrow by rustling the 
paper' or rattling the money in his ears? How 
worthless it would seem when she, the little 
daughter for whom he earned it all, was gone ! 

Such consecrations of our life to others are very 
often not less real and powerful because they are 
unconscious. Often they are not revealed to us our- 
selves until some sorrow comes, such as I just de- 
scribed. How many of us have known Avhat all this 
means! We have gone on with our work in life, 
thinking that the purpose of our work was centred 
in ourselves ! It was our own work that we were 
doing. We were working for ourselves. But some 
day a friend died — one who was ver)^ near to us, one 
in whom our life was bound up in many ways. 
Who has not known sometimes in life the dreadful 
going out of all the interest of living at the time of 
such a death? It seemed as if there were nothing 
left to live for. You looked upon your money, and 
wondered how you ever could have cared to earn it. 
The commonest little duties that recurred after the 
death was over were weariness to you. You looked 
forward, and it seemed as if you never could live out 
the long, flat, dreary days that stretched between you 
and the grave. The days Avent by, each with its 
twenty-four hours, each with its sunset and its sun- 
rise, but the zest of them was all gone for you. The 
public life, the social life, went on, but it called to 
your dead interest in vain. What did you care for 



HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 49 

it all? Then you found that you had indeed been 
working for that dear dead friend, that wife, child, 
brother, as you never knew. All that j^ou did had 
taken its value, not from you, but from them. 
When you thought you were working for yourself, 
you really had been working for them. And so their 
death had taken all the spring and impulse from 
you. It was terrible. But it was blessed if you did 
not stop there, but, with persistent love that would 
not be satisfied until it found the object it had lost, 
you traced the precious life on as it left you, till 3'ou 
followed it into the very bosom of the God who took 
it, and poured out there the treasures of devotion 
which had no longer any one dear enough to tempt 
them on the earth. 

One cannot help feeling as he looks at working- 
men that this more than anything else is what 
makes the difference between them — the presence or 
absence in their lives of some distinct superior pur- 
pose for their work, to which it is all dedicated. It 
may be the comfort of a familv, it may be a good 
cause, the support of education, the fostering of the 
great work of the Church ; whatever it is, so it be 
something greater than the work itself, so that the 
work is turned from an end into a means, it light- 
ens the pressure of the work most wonderfully, it 
relieves the continual burden. Take two men work- 
ing in the field together — they dig across the field 
side by side, but one is always longing for the end 
where he can lie down and rest. The other rejoices 
in every stroke of his spade as if it were one more 
stone laid in the home that he is trying to build, in 



50 HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 

the cause which he desires to strengthen. And there 
is no work so lofty in itself that it does not thus 
need something higher than itself to be done for, 
something to lift its heavy pressure from the sore and 
weary backs of men. Even the work of the Lord 
Jesus, that work in which His soul delighted, the 
work of telling men of God and saving the world of 
sin, — I think no one can read the Gospels and not see 
that He was alwaj' s lifting the heavy pressure of that 
work by reminding Himself that He was doing it for 
His Father, Is it not very touching He rests, 
beyond His own pleasure in His work, upon the con- 
sciousness that it is His Father's pleasure too. " I 
have' finished the work that Thou gavest me to do." 
That was the perfect satisfaction with which the 
Saviour, as it were, folded His hands from His long 
task and went to hang upon the cross. That was the 
casting down, as it were, of His crown before His 
Father's throne. 

We have been speaking of the smaller inspirations 
that come to men to lighten and redeem their labors, 
but they are all subordinate to this, the sense that 
the work that we are doing in the world is done for 
Christ and God. If a man or woman is able to get 
and keep that, there is no drudgery so mean and 
prushing that it cannot be lifted and made buoyant — 
absolutely none. It is good to think how many men 
and women that seemed to live in slavery have really 
lived the freest lives, lifted above their slavery by 
this continual oonsciousness of work for God. They 
reahzed another meaning of those wonderful words 
pf David, — among the raost wonderful in all the 



HOMAGE AND DEDICATION, 51 

Bible, I think, — "I will walk at liberty, for I keep thy 
commandments." They would know what those 
words that we used in this morning's service really 
mean, '' O God, whose service is perfect freedom." 
This was the case with multitudes of the poor slaves 
who have toiled anywhere in their slavery upon the 
suffering earth. Flogged to their work, living in 
misery, torn from their families, stripped of all the 
sweetness of life that comes from having something, 
somebody, to work for, what was there to lift off the 
load of unthanked and unprofitable labor such as 
theirs? There could be nothing unless there came, 
as there did come to many a darkened soul among 
them, a conviction that their weary work, their 
weary lives, were tributes and offerings to Jesus — 
that He loved them so, and had so utterly taken them 
for His, that He was pleased and glorified when they 
were patient and submissive in the wretchedness 
from which they could find no escape. As soon as 
they saw this, all was completely changed. The 
cabin walls opened and it was a temple. The dreary 
cotton-field became already, by anticipation and faith, 
the field beside the river of life under the towers of 
the New Jerusalem, where they who have served Him 
faithfully and glorified His name are to walk forever 
with the Lamb. 

We speak of them because their suffering stood out 
strong and picturesque. But the release that came 
to faithful Christian hearts among them was nothing 
different in kind from that which comes to hundreds 
of patient sufferers everywhere, always. When it 
enters like a flood of light into the soul of some 



52 HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 

wretched invalid or some victim of relentless misfort 
une, that by a faithful patience under his suffering 
he can glorify God and show forth the power of 
Christ, then what a change comes to him ! How 
all is transfigured! How full of beauty the hatedsick- 
room grows ! There is something behind the suffering 
for the suffering to rest and steady itself upon. The 
light has been kindled behind the dark window, and 
all its fair lines and bright colors shine out. In the 
purpose of the suffering the escape from the suffer- 
ing is found ; as when Paul and Silas, in the book 
of Acts, sang praises to God by night in prison, when 
they turned their imprisonment into a tribute to 
their Master, then '' the foundations of the prison 
were shaken, and . . . the doors were opened, and 
every one's bands were loosed." 

I am sure that there are many among us who feel 
the need to have the labor of our life redeemed, — 
merchants, clerks, lawyers, laborers, teachers, house- 
keepers, one thing or another, — the chosen or fated 
task of our life so often seems to be mere drudgery, 
crowding us down, pressing the life out of us. It is 
strange how soon many young men get to feel this 
about the occupations to which they have given up 
their lives, and all their first enthusiasm dies away. 
Then come the dreary years of unrelieved and un- 
enthusiastic work, only enlivened by the unhealthy 
excitement of mere commercial rivalry or professional 
spite. How many men we have seen restless all their 
lives, forever changing their work because they could 
not stand the heavy pressure of mere heavy, hated 
toil ! Does not what we have been saying seem to 



HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 53 

show that the troiilile lies not in the kind oi work, 
but in this — in whether men have beyond their work 
a purpose to dedicate it to, which can make it light 
and buoyant? No doubt some works more easily 
find such a purpose than others do, but any work 
that is good aud honest is capable of it. And this 
decides the ranks of works and their effects upon the 
men who do them. No work is necessarily sacred in 
its influence upon the man who does it, and no le- 
gitimate work is necessarily secular and secularizing. 
It is possible to sell goods for God's glory, and it is 
possible (as the Church knows only too well) to swing 
censers and preach sermons for our own; and then 
there is no doubt that the man who sells goods gets 
more blessing: out of his work than the man who 
sways. the censer or preaches the discourse. 

One would wish to urge this very strongly upon 
every man, especially upon every 3'oung man who is 
just beginning his work in life, and to whom his 
work, it may be, has already begun to show that in 
time it may come to be a weariness and a burden. 
What you need is some purpose beyond. What shall 
it be ? The possible purposes lie in circles stretching 
one beyond another. If you can do your work for a 
friend or for a family as well as for yourself, you have 
already redeemed much of its sordidness. If you can 
do it for a cause, for the progress of society and the 
improvement of business, for your country, for your 
church, then you have lifted it still more. If you 
can do it for God, in perfect, childlike, loving desire 
for His glory, then your work, be it as heavy in its 
nature as it may, leaps of itself from the low ground, 



64 HOMAGE AND DEDICATION. 

and, instead of crushing you with it to the earth, car- 
ries you up every day into the presence of the God 
for whom you do it. That is the continual beauty 
of a consecrated life, possible under all sorts of cir- 
cumstances, possible to every kind of man in every 
kind of task. 

Need I tell you the only thing that remains to be 
told? Need I tell you that the only influence which 
can really make us consecrate our lives and works to 
Christ is the profound and joyous confidence that 
Christ has done that for us, which makes the utter 
consecration of ourselves only a feeble token of the 
gratitude we owe and want to give ? It is the soul 
forgiven — the soul to which the cross is everything 

— the soul living every day in the richness of the 
new reconciliation to the Father — this is the soul 
that values all it has and does, only as a possible 
tribute to its Redeemer and its Lord. This is the 
soul that casts its Crown of life down at the feet 
of the Lord of life, and glories in its Crown's rich- 
ness not for itself, but for the greater praise of Him. 
Is there a motive of work conceivable so pure, so 
strong, so joyous, so humbling, so exalting, as this? 

— that a man should first take Christ's free love and 
then try to live as full and bounteous a life as pos- 
sible, that he might have as worthy a tribute as pos- 
sible to offer to his Lord and Saviour? 



IV. 



THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON THE 
SEASHORE. 

** And Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore." — Ex^ 
ODUS xiv. 30. 

It was the Red sea which the children of Israel 
had crossed dry-shod, '' which the Egyptians essaying 
to do were drowned." The parted waves had swept 
back upon the host of the pursuers. The tumult 
and terror, which had rent the air, had sunk into 
silence, and all that the escaped people saw was here 
and there a poor drowned body beaten up upon the 
bank, where they stood with the great flood between 
tiiem and the land of their long captivity and op- 
pression. It meant everything to the Israelites. It 
was not only a wonderful deliverance for them, but 
a terrible calamity for their enemies. It was the end 
of a frightful period in their history. These were 
the men under whose arrogant lordship they had 
chafed and wrestled. These hands had beaten them. 
These eyes they had seen burning with scorn and 
hate. A thousand desperate rebellions, which had 
not set them free, must have come up in their minds. 
Sometimes they had been successful for a moment ; 
sometimes they had disabled or disarmed their ty- 
rants ; but always the old tyranny had closed back 



56 THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON THE SEASHOPE. 

upon them more pitilessly than before. But now all 
that was over; whatever else they might have to 
meet, the Egyptian captivity Avas at an end. Each 
dead Egyptian face on which they looked was token 
and witness to them that the power of their masters 
over them had perished. They stood and gazed at 
the hard features, set and stern, but powerless in 
death, and then turned their faces to the desert, and 
to whatever new unknown experiences God might 
have in store for them. 

It is a picture, I think, of the way in which ex- 
periences in this world become finished, and men 
pass on to other experiences which lie beyond. In 
some moods it seems to us as if nothing finally got 
done. When we are in the thick of an experience 
we find it hard to believe or to imagine that the time 
will ever come, when that experience shall be wholly 
a thing of the past and we shall have gone out 
beyond it into other fields. When we open our eyes 
morning after morning and find the old struggle on 
which Ave closed our eyes last night awaiting us ; 
when we open our door each day only to find our 
old enemy upon the doorstep ; w^hen all our habits 
and thoughts and associations have become entwined 
and colored Avith some tyrannical necessity, Avhich, 
however it may change the form of its tyranny, Avill 
never let us go, — it grows so hard as almost to appear 
impossible for us to anticipate that that dominion 
ever is to disappear, that Ave shall CA^er shake free our 
Avings and leave behind the earth to which Ave have 
been chained so long. On the long sea-voyage the 
green earth becomes inconceivable. To the traveller in 



THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON THE SEASHORE. 57 

the mountains or the desert it becomes very difficult 
to believe that he shall some day reach the beach and 
sail upon the sea. But the day comes, nevertheless. 
Some morning we go out to meet the old struggle, and 
it is not there. Some day we listen for the old voice 
of our old tyrant, and the air is still. At last the day 
does come when our Egyptian, our old master, who 
has held our life in his hard hands, lies dead upon 
the seashore, and looking into his cold face we know 
that our life with him is over, and turn our eyes and 
our feet eastward to a journey in wdiich he shall have 
no part. Things do get done, and when they do, 
when anything is really finished, then come serious 
and thoughtful moments in which we ask ourselves 
whether we have let that which we shall know no 
longer do for us all that it had the power to do, 
whether we are carrying out of the finished experi- 
ence that which it has all along been trying to give 
to our characters and souls. 

For while we leave everything behind in time, it 
is no less true that nothing is wholly left behind. 
All that we ever have been or done is with us in 
some power and consequence of it until the end. Is 
it not most significant that these children of Israel, 
whom we behold to-day looking the- dead Egyptians 
in the face and then turning their backs on Egypt, 
are known and appealed to ever afterwards as the 
people whom the Lord their God had brought " out 
of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" ? 
In every most critical and sacred moment of their 
history they are bidden to recall their old captivity. 
When God most wants them to know Him, it is as 



68 THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON THE SEASHORE. 

the God of their deliverance that He declares Him- 
self. The unity of life is never lost. There must 
not be any waste. How great and gracious is the 
economy of life which it involves! Neither to dwell 
in any experience always, nor to count any experience 
as if it had not been, but to leave the forms of our 
experiences behind, and to go forth from them clothed 
in their spiritual power, which is infinitely free and 
capable of new activities, — this is what God is 
always teaching us is possible, and tempting us to 
do. To him w^ho does it come the two great bless- 
ings of a growing life, — faithfulness and liberty: 
faithfulness in each moment's task, and liberty to 
enter through the gates beyond which lies the larger 
future. ''Well done, good servant: thou hast been 
faithful over a few things. Enter thou into the joy 
of thy Lord." 

All this is true, but it is very general. What I 
want to do this morning is to ask you to think about 
the special experience to which our text refers, and 
consider how one truth is true of that, and of what 
corresponds to it in all men's lives. It was the end 
of a struggle which had seemed interminable. The 
hostility of Hebrew and Egyptian had gone on for 
generations. However their enmity may be dis- 
guised or hidden, the tj^rant and the slave are always 
foes. If hope had ever lived, it had died long ago. 
Patient endurance, grim submission, with desperate 
revolt whenever the tyranny grew most tyrannical, 
— these had seemed to be the only virtues left to the 
poor serfs. Not to be demoralized and ruined by 
their servitude, to keep their self-respect, to be sure 



THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON THE SEASHOKE. 59 

still that they were Abraham's children and that 
Abraham's God still cared for them, patience and 
fortitude, — these must have been the exhortations 
which they addressed to their poor souls as they 
toiled on in the brickyard or by the river. 

It does not prove anything, if you please, about 
our present life, but it certainly sets us to asking 
new questions about it, perhaps to believing greater 
things concerning it, when in our typical story we 
behold all this changed. Behold, the day came when 
the chains were broken and the slaves went free. 
Are, then, our slaveries as hopeless as they seem? 
Are we condemned only to struggle with our enemies 
in desperate fight, and shall we not hope to se^ them 
some day dead like the Egyptians on the seashore? 

Surely it is good for us to ask that question, for 
nothing is more remarkable than the way in which, 
both in public and personal life, men accept the per- 
manence of conditions which are certainly some day 
to disappear. The whole of history which teaches 
us that mankind does conquer its enemies and see 
its tyrants by and by lying dead on the seashore, 
often appears to have no influence with the minds 
of men, all absorbed as they are in what seems a 
hopeless struggle. But look around! Where are 
the Egyptians which used to hold tlie human body 
and the human soul in slavery? Have you ever 
counted? The divine right of rulers, the dominion 
of the priesthood over the intellect and conscience, 
the ownersliip of man by man, the accepted ine- 
quality of human lots, the complacent acquiescence 
in false social states, the use of torture to extort tlie 



60 THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPOlSr THE SEASHORE. 

needed lie, the praise of ignorance as the safeguard 
of order, the irresponsible possession of power without 
corresponding duty, the pure content in selfishness — 
do you realize, in the midst of the cynical and de- 
spairing talk by which we are surrounded, can you 
realize, how these bad tyrants of the human race 
have lost their power over large regions of human 
life ? They are dead Egyptians. Abominable social 
theories which fifty years ago, in the old days of 
slavery, in the old days of accepted pauperism, 
men stated as melancholy, but hopeless, truisms are 
now the discarded rubbish of antiquity, kept as they 
keep the racks and thumb-screws in old castle-dun- 
geons for a tourists' show. 

Is there anything more wonderful than the way in 
which men to-day are daring to think of the abolition 
and disappearance of those things which they used 
to think were as truly a part of human life as the 
human body, or the ground on which it walks ? Ah ! 
my friends, you only show how you are living in the 
past, not in the present, when you see nothing but 
material for sport in the beliefs of ardent men and 
brave societies which set before themselves and human 
kind the abolition of poverty, the abolition of war, 
the abolition of ignorance, the abolition of disease, 
the sweeping away of mere money competition as the 
motive power of life, the dethronement of fear from 
the high place which it has held among, aye, almost 
above, all the ruling and shaping powers of the des- 
tiny of man. I recognize in many a frantic cry the 
great growing conviction of mankind that nothing 
which ought not to be need be. I hear in many 



THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON THE SEASHORE. Gl 

hoarse, ungracious tones man's utterance of liis con- 
yiction that much which his fathers thought was 
meant to cultivate their patience by submission, is 
meant also to cultivate their courage by resistance 
till it dies. " The Egyptian must die." That is the 
assurance which is possessing the heart of man. 

When any evil does finally perish, then there is 
something infinitely pathetic in the remembrance of 
the way in which mankind for generations accepted 
it as inevitable and drew out of its submission to it 
such blessing and education as pure submission to the 
inevitable is able to bestow. The poor man, who 
thinks his poverty, and the ignorance and servitude 
which his poverty entails, all right, comforts himself 
by saying that God made him poor in order that he 
might be patient and learn to possess his soul in self-^ 
respect. By and by when the iniquity of the system 
under which he has lived gives way and he finds him- 
self admitted to the full rights and duties of a man — 
what then ? Infinitely pathetic, as it seems to me, is 
the recognition that he wins of the great love and 
wisdom with which God would not let even that 
darkness be entirely fruitless of light ; but while He 
was making ready for the fuller life of which the 
poor man never dreamed, at the same time fed him 
in the wilderness with manna which the wilderness 
alone could give, so that no delight of freedom to 
which he afterwards should come need make him 
wholly curse or utterly despise the regions of dark- 
ness and restraint through wlfich he came to reach it. 

Is it not thus that we may always explain at least 
a part, the best part, of that strange longing with 



62 THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON THE SEASHORE. 

which the world, when it has entered into any higher 
life, still finds itself looking back to the lower life 
out of which it has passed? It is not properly regret. 
It is not a desire to turn back into the darkness. The 
age of real faith does not covet again the chains of 
superstition. The world at peace does not ask to be 
shaken once more by the earthquakes of war. But 
faith does feel the beauty of complete surrender which 
superstition kept for its sole spiritual virtue; and 
peace, with its diffused responsibility, is kindled at the 
thought of heroic and unquestioning obedience which 
the education of war produced. Still let superstition 
and war lie dead. We will not call them back to 
life ; but we will borrow their jewels of silver and 
jewels of gold as we go forth into the wilderness to 
worship our God with larger worship. Do you not 
feel this in all the best progress ? Do you not see it 
in the eyes of mankind, in the depths of the eyes of 
mankind always, as it turns away from the dead forms 
of its old masters and goes forth into the years to be; 
the hoarded power of the past glowing beneath the 
satisfaction of the present and the fiery hope of the 
unknown future ? 

Ah, well, there is always something fascinating in 
thus dwelling on the fortunes of the world at large, 
peering, like fortune-telling gypsies, into the open 
palm which she holds out to all of us. It is fas- 
cinating, and is not without its profit. But just as, I 
suppose, the shrewdest gypsy may often be the most 
recklessly foolish in the government of her own life, 
so it is good for us always to turn speedily and ask 
how the principles which we have been wisely apply- 



THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON THE SEASHORE. 63 

ing to the world, apply to that bit of the world which 
we are set to live. 

Do we believe — you and I — in the death of our 
Egyptians ? What is your Egyptian ? Some passion 
of the flesh or of the mind? — for the mind has its 
tyrannical passions as well as the flesh. Years, years 
ago, you became its captive. Perhaps you cannot at 
all remember when. Pei'haps, like these children of 
Israel, you were born into its captivity. It was your 
father, or your father's fathers, that first became its 
slaves. When you first came to know yourself, its 
chains were on . your limbs. As you grew older you 
knew that it was slavery, but it was such a part of 
all you were and all you did that you accepted it. 
That has not made you cease to struggle with it, but 
it has made you accept struggle hopelessly, as some- 
thing never to be outgrown and left behind. You 
have looked forward into the stretch of years, and in 
prophetic imagination you have seen yourself an old 
man, still wrestling with the tyranny of your covet- 
ousness, or your licentiousness, or your prejudice, 
getting it down, planting your foot upon its neck, 
even compelling it to render you, out of the unceasing 
struggle, new supplies of character; absolutely fixed 
and determined never to give up the fight until you 
die — to die fighting. All this is perfectly familiar. 
Countless noble and patient souls live in such self- 
knowledge and consecration. But there comes some- 
thing vastly beyond all these, when the soul dares to 
believe that its enemy may die, that the lust, or the 
prejudice, or the covetousness may absolutely pass 
out of existence, and the nature be absolutely free — - 



64 THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPOX THE SEASHORE. 

sure no doubt to meet other enemies and to struggle 
till the end, but done with that enemy forever, with 
that Egyptian finally dead upon the seashore. 

When that conviction takes possession of a man, 
his fight is a new thing. The courage not of des- 
peration, but of certain hope, fills every limb and gives 
its force to every blow. The victory which the soul 
believes is coming is here already as a power for its 
own attainment. 

Has a man a right to any such hope as that, or is 
it the mere dream of an optimistic sermon ? I dare 
appeal to you and ask you whether, in your own 
experience, God has not sometimes given you the 
right to such a hope ? Are there no foes of your 
youth which you have conquered and left dead, -pass- 
ing on to greater battles? I am not speaking of the 
vices which you have miserably left behind, merely 
because the taste is exhausted and the strength has 
failed — vices which you would take up again if you 
were once more twenty years old. Those are poor 
victories. Those are no victories at all. But I mean 
this : Whether you are a better or a worse man now 
than you were twenty years ago. Are there not at 
least some temptations to which you yielded then to 
which you know that you can never yield again? Are 
there not some meannesses which you once thought 
glorious which now you know are mean ? Are there 
no places where yon once stumbled where now you 
know you can walk firm ? I pity you if there are not. 
Other enemies which you then never dreamed of j^oa 
have since encountered, but those enemies are done 
with. The Moabites and Midianites are before you 



THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPOX THE SEASHOKE. 65 

and around you, but the Egyptians are dead. And in 
their death your right and duty are to read the proph- 
ecy of the death of every power which stands up 
between you and the Promised Land ! 

The appeal is not only to experience. It is to the 
first Christian truth concerning man. I have preached 
it to you a thousand times. I will preach it again 
and again until the end. The great truth of Chris- 
tianity, the great truth of Christ, is that sin is unnat- 
ural and has no business in a human life. The birth 
of Christ proclaimed that in one tone: His cross pro- 
claimed it in another! And that which is unnat- 
ural is not by any necessity permanent. The struggle 
of all nature is against the unnatural — to dislodge 
it and cast it out. That beautiful struggle per- 
vades the world. It is going on in every clod of 
earth, in every tree, in every star, and in the soul of 
man. First to declare and then to strengthen that 
struggle in the soul of man was the work of Christ. 
That work still lingers and fails of full completion^ 
but its power is present in the world. When He 
takes possession of a nature He quickens that strug- 
gle into life. No longer can that nature think it- 
self doomed to evil. Intensely sensitive to feel the 
presence of evil as he never felt it before, the Chris- 
tian man instantly and intensely knows that evil is a 
stranger and an intruder in his life. The wonder is 
not that it should some day be cast out : the wonder 
is that it should ever have come in. The victory 
promised in the sinless Son of man is already poten- 
tially attained in the intense conception of its natural- 
ness. This is Christianity, 



66 THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON^ THE SEASHOKE. 

Is not this the change which you can see coming 
in the faces of the sinners who meet Jesus and feel 
His power in the wonderful stories which fill the 
pages of the Gospels? The first thing which comes 
to them, the great thing which comes to them all, is 
a change in their whole conception of life. What 
used to seem natural comes to seem most unnatural. 
That which they called unnatural becomes so natural 
that they cannot see why it should not immediately 
come to pass. The rich young man's money begins 
to fade in his hand, and he feels •its tyranny passing 
away. The Magdalen^s face grows luminous with a 
new vision of purity as the only true human life. 
Bigotry looks to Nicodemus what it really is. The 
simple naturalness in the hope that the children of 
God should live the life of God comes and folds 
itself around each of them. And in that atmos- 
phere of their new life the old life with its old bond- 
ages dies. 

You see how positive all this is. And that, too, 
seems to me to be depicted in the old Hebrew story, 
which we are using for our parable. It was on the 
farther seashore of the Red sea that the Egyptian 
pursuers of the Israelites lay dead. It was when the 
people of God had genuinely undertaken the journey 
to the land which God had given them, that the 
grasp of their enemy gave way and the dead hands 
let them go. You may fight with your enemy on his 
own ground, only trying to get the immediate better 
of him, and win what he claims for yourself, and 
your fight will go on, more or less a failure, more or 
less a victory, forever. You must go forth into a new 



THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON THE SEASHOKE. 67 

land, into the new ambition of a higher life, and 
then, wlien he tries to follow you there, he perishes. 

O selfish man ! not merely by trying not to be sel- 
fish, but by entering into the new joy of unselfish 
consecration, so only shall you kill your selfishness. 
When you are vigorously trying to serve your fellow- 
men, the last chance that you will be unjust or cruel 
to them will disappear. When you are full of enthu- 
siasm for truth, the cold hands of falsehood will let 
you go. Get the Egyptian off his own ground, seek 
not the same low things by higher means; seek 
higher things, and the low means will know that they 
cannot hold you their slave. They will lie down and 
die. And then the pillar of fire and the pillar of 
cloud w^U have you for their own and lead you on in 
your, free journey. 

With regard, then, to a man's permanent escape 
from evil, may we not say these two things, — that it 
must come about as the natural privilege of his life, 
and it must be positive ? To the soul which has 
finally escaped from sin into the full freedom of the 
perfect life, the soul which has entered into the celes- 
tial liberty, must not these two things be clear,— 
first, that his old dream of life was a delusion, that 
he was never meant to be the thing which he so 
long allowed himself to be ; and, second, that the 
great interests of the celestial life, the service of God 
which has there claimed the child of God, makes 
sure forever that there shall be no return to the old 
servitude ? And what we dare to believe shall there 
in heaven come perfectly, and with reference to all 
wickedness, why may we not believe that here and 



68 THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON THE SEASHORE. 

now it may come in its degree with reference to some 
special sin ? Know that it is not natural that you 
should steal, that you should lie ; get rid of the first 
awful assumption that it is bound up with your con- 
stitution, cease to be a weak fatalist about it. That 
is the first thing. And then launch bravely forth 
into brave works of positive honesty and truth. In- 
sist that your life shall not merely deny some false- 
hood, but that it shall assert some trutli. Then, not 
till then, shall the lie let you go, and your soul count 
it impossible ever again to do — wonderful, almost 
incredible, that it ever should have done — what once 
it used to do from day to day. 

I think that there are few things about our human 
nature which are more constantly marvellous than 
its power of acclimating itself in moral and spiritual 
regions where it once seemed impossible that it 
should live at all. The tree upon the hillside says : 
"Here and here alone can I live. Here my fathers 
lived in all their generations. Into this hard soil 
they struck their roots, and drank their sustenance 
out of its rocky depths. Take me down to the 
plain and I shall die." The gardener knows better. 
He takes the doubting and despairing plant and 
carries it, even against its will, to the broad valley, 
and sets it where the cold winds shall not smite it, 
and where the rich ground feeds it with luxuriance. 
And almost as they touch each other the ground and 
the root claim one another, and rich revelations of its 
own possibility flood the poor plant and fill it full 
of marvel with itself. 

Of less and less consequence and meaning seem 



THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON THE SEASHORE. 69 

to me those easy things which men are always saying 
about their own natures and character. " I have no 
spiritual capacity," says one. '^ It is not in me to be a 
saint," another cries. '' I have a covetous soul. I 
cannot live except in winning money." " I can make 
many sacrifices, but I cannot give up my drink." 
" I can do many things, but I cannot be reverent." 
So the man talks about himself. Poor creature, does 
he think that he knows, down to its centre, this won- 
derful humanity of his ? It all sounds so plausible 
and is so untrue ! " Surely the man must know him- 
self and his own limitations." Why must he ? How 
can he know what lurking power lies packed away 
within the never-opened folds of this inactive life ? 
Has he ever dared to call himself the child of God, 
and for one moment felt what that involves ? Has 
he ever attacked the task w^hich demands those 
powers whose existence he denies, or tried to press 
on into the region where those evil things cannot 
breathe which he complacently declares are an in- 
separable portion of his life ? There is nothing on 
earth more seemingly significant and more absolutely 
insignificant than men's judgment of their own moral 
and spiritual limitations. 

When the fallacy has been exposed, when the man 
has become something which he used to go about de- 
claring that it was absolutely impossible that he 
should ever be, or has cast finally away that which 
he has counted a very part and portion of his life, it is 
often very interesting to see how he thinks of his cast- 
off sin. He, if he is a true man, counts his escape 
complete, but he never forgets his old bondage. He 



70 THE EGYPTIANS DEAD UPON THE SEASHOPvE. 

is always one whom God has led '' out of the land of 
Egj^pt." Egypt is still there, although he has escaped 
from it. Egypt did not cease to be when the Egyp- 
tians Avith whom he had to do fell dead. Men are 
still doing the sin which has now become impossible 
for him. He understands those men by his past, 
while he cannot imagine himself sharing their life to- 
day. He is full of sympathy with the sinner, which 
is one with, of the same substance as, his security 
against the sin. Pity and hopefulness and humility 
and strength all blend into the peaceful and settled 
composure of his life. 

It is a noble attitude towards a dead sin. You look 
into its dead face and are almost grateful to it. Not 
with a gratitude which makes you any way more tol- 
erant of its character. You hate it with your heart — 
but look! Has it not given you self-knowledge, and 
made you cry out to God and set your face towards 
the new life ? 

My friends, get something done ! Get something 
done ! Do not go on forever in idle skirmishing 
with the same foe. Realize, as you sit here, who 
your chief enemy is, what vice of mind or body, 
what false or foul habit. Cry out to God for 
strength. Set your face resolutely to a new life in 
which that vice shall have no part. Go out and 
leave it dead. Plenty of new battles and new foes, 
but no longer that battle and that foe ! Get some- 
thing done ! May He who overcame, not merely for 
Himself but for us all, give you courage and make 
you sharers in His victory and in the liberty which He 
attained. 



V. 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 

*' For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against princi- 
palities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this 
world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." — Ephesians 
vi. 12. 

" The Battle of Life " is a metaphor which almost 
all men at some time in their lives realize and own 
as true. It suggests a picture which recalls to almost 
every man his own history, if his has been at all an ear- 
nest life. We may think that it has not been so with 
other men ; we may look at some bright and smiling 
life, and say with something of envy, with something 
also almost like reproach in our tone, "Lo, life has 
no battle for him ! Behold how smooth and easy all 
the wo]:ld has been for him ! " The man himself 
knows better. And we, if we come close to him, can 
see the scars, nay, we can hear the battle of his life 
still going on. But whether we come close enough 
to him to know the real truth of his life or not, we 
know tlie truth about our own. Life is a battle. 
Forever on the watch against our enemies, forever 
guarding our own lives, forever watching our chance 
for an attack upon the foe, — so we all live if we are 
earnest men. 

And this universal consciousness of battle is true 
to the figure by which we illustrate it in this, — that 



72 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 

it affects different fighters in different ways, it in- 
spires them with most various emotions. To one 
man the fact of the struggle of life is a perpetual 
exhilaration : upon another it weighs with an almost 
intolerable oppressiveness. To one man the ever- 
sounding battle bugle calling men always to the 
fight, brings a dismay which paralyzes every power : 
another man it seems to distract into the wildest 
folly, and he rushes everywhere, striking at random 
at friend or foe. It has no uniform effect. It catches 
each man as it finds him, and inspires him according 
to his character. 

But metaphors are delusive, and if we cling too 
long and closely to them they grow tiresome. They 
are very apt often to blind us to the need of care- 
ful definition and discrimination. This metaphor, for 
instance, — Life a Battle, — may seem so satisfactory 
that it may lead us to forget that there are all kinds 
of battles, that we do not know much about a battle 
until we understand who the enemy is and what the 
weapons are. Two tribes of savages hewing away at 
each other in the jungle, the host of crusaders con- 
tending with the soldiers of the prophets on the 
great plain of Galilee, the Swiss peasants fighting for 
freedom in their mountain fastnesses, our soldiers 
struggling with rebellion, — all these are battles ; but 
how different they are! Evidently, before the old 
metaphor, 'Hhe Battle of Life," can mean anything 
very definite or practical to us, we must open it with 
the sharp knife of a question. We must ask who is 
the enemy with whom the battle of life is being 
fought. 



THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 73 

The answers which will come are very various, and 
more than one answer will be true. See what some 
of the many answers are. The men who are engaged 
in any of the hard elemental works by which the 
earth is subdued to the use of man will tell us that 
human life is one long fight with nature. The sailor 
on the sea, the farmer in the field, the miner in the 
bowels of the earth, the woodman in the forest, — all 
of these are wrestling with the outer forces of the 
earth, and their hard battle rings in the endless chorus 
of axe and hammer which sounds through every land. 
Then comes the merchant fighting with the competi- 
tion of his brethren. Then comes the legislator fight- 
ing with the barbarous tendencies which still haunt 
the most civilized societies. Then come the philan- 
thropists fighting with abuses and ignorance and 
cruelty. And everywhere there is the man, hopefully 
or hopelessly, fighting with what he calls his fate, — 
the general aggregate of things about him and behind 
him which seems set to keep him down and to impede 
his way. The world is full of all these ideas of 
battle. And then right into the midst of them steps 
Paul, with his clear, ringing Christian word, "What 
are you fighting with? Do you ask that?" he says. 
" Lo, I can tell you. You are fighting with great 
evil principles and powers. You are fighting with 
forces of wickedness which come into this world from 
depths bej^ond our human nature. Obstinate nature, 
the rivalry of men, imperfect institutions, cruel hab- 
its, all those are ugly enemies, but the real enemy is 
Badness itself. The real fight is with that." Surely 
there is something very sharp and ringing in his 



74 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 

answer. To find out what he means by it, if we can, 
will be the purpose of my sermon. 

There can be little doubt of what Paul meant 
when he first used the word. His thought is per- 
fectly distinct and clear. He cries to his Ephesians, 
'^ You are fighting with principalities and powers, 
against the world rulers of this darkness, against 
spiritual wickedness in the heavenly regions, in the 
sky or air." They are lofty words, and they are very 
definite. He is thinking of evil spirits. He believes 
distinctly in a universe all full of unseen forces. The 
sky was full of them. They were about us all the 
time. As some of them were the friends, so others of 
them were the enemies, of our souls and our best life. 
How wide that faith has been among mankind ! How 
deeply it is imprinted on the pages of the Bible ! 
How it has been allow^ed to melt and fade away out 
of the belief of hosts of people, even of those who 
read the Bible ! And the reason, it seems to me, 
why the belief in a world of unseen forces with which 
we have to do, which has to do with us, — the reason 
why the belief in good and evil spirits has so faded 
away out of men's thoughts, is not any essential un- 
reasonableness in the belief itself. Nor is it merely 
the tyranny of the visible world over men's senses, 
and through them over men's minds. It is, in large 
part, the fact that very, very often the believers in a 
universe of unseen spiiits liave not had St. Paul's 
loftiness and wisdom, but have made this unseen 
world a field for witchcraft and magic and the play 
of influences which the common moral sense of man- 
kind has not been able to understand. St. Paul be- 



THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 75 

lieved in spirits good and bad. The beauty of his 
belief in them was that, different as they might 
be from us in the conditions of their life, they still 
belonged to the same great moral system to which 
he belonged. The good spirits- were not to be 
propitiated, and the evil spirits were not to be dis- 
armed by magic and incantations. He who did right- 
eousness called to himself the most mysterious 
strength of the unseen Avorlds, He and he alone was 
safe against the assaults of the spirits of darkness. 
This appears, you. know, in the very passage from 
which I take my text. "Because we wrestle against 
these invisible enemies, therefore take unto you the 
whole armor of God, having your loins girt about 
with truth, and having on the breastplate of right- 
eousness." When we think how generally the be- 
lievers in a world of spiritual forces have grown 
fantastic, and have tried to influence the forces of 
that unseen world by enchantments which had no 
moral meaning, we see how much more dignified 
and lofty is St. Paul's position. To him goodness, 
morality, was the first condition of all life. Here on 
this earth or anywhere beyond the stars, to be good 
must be the first condition of all strength. He who 
was good, he who was trying to be good, entered 
therebj" into friendly confederation with all the noble 
forces of the universe, and bid defiance to all the evil 
powers of the sky and air. For him all good beings 
fought ; against his simple righteousness all evil be- 
ings would beat themselves in vain, and ultimately 
must go down and fail, here or beyond the stars. 
That is a noble faith. In the simplicity and grandeur 



76 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 

of a faith like that, man will some day come once 
more to the now ahuost lost belief in the connection 
of his life with unseen spiritual powers. There is an 
ineradicable disposition in the human soul to think 
that this one little world is not apart from all the 
rest. And Scripture finds its sanction in the best 
human instincts when it says that he who is doing 
righteousness is on the side of the great currents of 
universal life, and has not only God but all good 
spirits for his friends. I have wandered a little from 
our subject, but yet tt all leads on to this idea on 
which we want to dwell, that whether we fully 
realize St. Paul's description of the evil spirits with 
whom the Christian has to fight, or whether his ene- 
mies present themselves to us rather as abstract prin- 
ciples to which we do not attach personality as clearly 
as St. Paul did, still it is something invisible, some- 
thing spiritual, something behind and deeper than 
the mere outward forms of things, within which the 
real difficulties of life lie, and with which the true 
man must do battle. 

In many ways men come to the discovery of this 
truth, often in ways that are full of pain and dis- 
appointment. Some brave reformer has struggled 
against a vicious institution, and by and by has 
succeeded in breaking it down. The great re- 
form is carried. Henceforth there is to be no 
more traffic in slaves. Henceforth the sale of drink 
shall be prohibited. Henceforth corruption is not 
to make prizes out of public office. How often has 
the successful reformer stood among the ruins of 
the demolished institution, and there, just in the 



THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 77 

first enthusiasm of his joy, been suddenly smitten 
with dismay and felt the shout of triumph perish 
on his lips ; for lo ! out of the ruins of the ruined 
institution rose a spectre, which he saw was the 
unkilled soul of the dead institution, and which, 
even as he gazed upon it, began to put itself forth 
in some new outward shape, to create for itself a 
new body, and to look defiance on the poor dis- 
couraged fighter, who saw how all his work had to 
be done over again from the beginning. Happy and 
truly brave is the reformer who is not disheartened, 
but enlightened, by that sight, and who does begin 
again with unabated zeal, striking with ever new 
vigor at each new abuse, but learning ever more 
and more deeply that not in evil institutions, but 
in evil principles, does the real evil lie ; and so ex- 
pecting to see slavery appear in one new form after 
another until the soul of the community is free, and 
intemperance revive in one new device after another 
until the soul of the community is sober, and cor- 
ruption reassert its power in one new shape after 
another till the soul of the community is honest. 
When he has come to that knowledge, then the 
reformer settles down undiscouraged to the heart of 
his battle, and summons the loftiest spiritual powers 
to his aid, and perseveres to death. And when death 
comes, and he goes, leaving his long work still 
undone, the very sight of the reality of spiritual 
forces which he wins as, dying, he comes nearer to 
their home seems often to make him more sure of 
the final victory just when his tired hands are drop- 
ping their weapons ; and he dies more than content. 



78 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 

The same truth comes in much the same way to 
the champion of sound doctrine and a true belief. 
'' Break down tliis heresy and then men will have 
faith," so cries the lover of God's truth as he sits 
down in his calm study to show how destitute of 
reason is the last superstition of the day. Perhaps 
he perfectlj^ succeeds. Perhaps he tears the poor 
flimsy argument to tatters, and leaves the fanatic 
or the blasphemer not a word to say for his poor 
fantasy. And then the weary controversialist goes 
to his well-earned rest, and wakes up in the morning 
to find the sun shining on a whole city full of new 
unbeliefs and misbeliefs, in which the spirit of faith- 
lessness has embodied itself during the night, and 
which stand there facing the sunrise with their 
bright new pinnacles and spires, which have taken 
possession of the sky as if they meant to shine there 
forever. Happy and brave and wise the champion 
of the faith who is not discouraged, but enlightened, 
by that sight, and who goes out again, ready to 
strike do^yn and disprove each new and special error 
as it rises, but who grows always more and more 
eager to change the deeper state, tlie heart and 
temper of the life about him, — to bring in faith for 
faithlessness, to give a true and deep, and true and 
healthy, tone to life, — so that this dreary work of 
ever disproving fantasy after fantasy need not go 
on forever ; but some day, - — however far away, — 
some day the time shall come when out of the heart 
of a healthily believing humanity nothing but true 
and healthy faith can grow. 



THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 79 

I turn back for an instant here to what I said 
about Paul and his belief in good and evil spirits, 
and about the current disbelief in all such beings 
which prevails to-day. Is not the method of the 
true belief indicated by what I have just now been 
saying? How shall the field be swept clear of all 
the paraphernalia of ghost stories and the false 
supernatural which brings its double harm, degrad- 
ing the souls that believe in it, and hardening into 
blank materialism the souls whom its absurdities or 
enormities drive into disbelief? You may prove one 
impostor after another to be false. You may dem- 
onstrate beyond all question that this or that 
phenomenon has nothing supernatural about it, but 
you will work in vain until you strike right at the 
root. of all the folly by taking Paul's ground, and 
insisting that whatever unseen presences there may 
be about us, we and they and all the universe 
must be subject to the eternal, universal sway of 
moral law ; that therefore the only way to really win 
the good and to really disarm the evil, from whatever 
region of the universe they make attacks upon us, is 
to live nobly, truly, purely. When men have been 
led to think thus of the world of spirits, then I do 
believe that we shall see a great restoral of healthy 
belief in spiritual presences. The fantastic and fit- 
ful, unreal and immoral, wav of thinking^ and feel- 
ing about them will disappear, and calmly, quietly, 
without fright, without fanaticism, with a great 
deepening of the sense of the moral criticalness of 
living, men will know that the universe is larger 
than this little earth, and that for a human creat- 



80 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 

ure to be good or bad means something out into 
unknown, unknowable regions of spiritual life. 

I have spoken of the way in which the knowledge 
of one truth, that the real struggle of life is not with 
institutions or creeds, but with moral and spiritual dis- 
positions, of which institutions and creeds are only 
the expressions, — the way in which this knowledge 
comes to the reformer when his work against a bad 
institution or a false creed has succeeded and he has 
conquered it. Not less important is the power which 
that knowledge may have in him while his hot fight 
is still going on. I hope that I speak to some men 
and women who count it their duty and their right 
to set themselves against the wrongs and evils of the 
world, and to do everything they can to set them 
right. They cannot be unaware of what the dangers 
of the agitation against evil are. To let the battle 
against wickedness and cruelty pass over into a per- 
sonal hatred of the wicked and cruel man, and ex- 
haust itself in personal attacks on him for other things 
besides his wickedness, — that is the constant peril. 
How often does the hot agitator need these calm, 
strong words : " Not against flesh and blood, but 
against principalities and powers, and the world- spirit 
of darkness, and the evil that is in the air." I know 
the answer that will come : " Evil incorporates it- 
self in men. How can you strike out the evil with- 
out beating down the men in whom it is embodied?" 
But surely no such statement as that, which is most 
absolutely true, can be stretched wide enough to 
cover the personal hatred, the wilful or careless mis- 
representation, the petty spite, with which the earnest 



THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 81 

advocate of some cause which he thought indubitably 
right has very often followed up the man upon the 
other side whom he believed of course to be indubita- 
bly wrong. Just see what some of the personal dis- 
advantages of such a disposition are. First, it puts it 
absolutely out of the angry partisan's power, in case 
he is not wholly right, to get any advantage or cor- 
rection from the opposite light in which his opponent 
sees the same transaction which he thinks so wrong ; 
second, it robs the furious hater of the chance to 
learn charity and personal consideration, for of course 
the chance to think tolerantly of a man who differs 
from us comes to us when we differ from him, and if, 
the moment that we differ from him, we begin to hate 
him, it is as if we shut up the door of one of our best 
school-rooms and turned the key of prejudice upon 
it; and, third, yet again it makes turbid and heavy 
and dull that stream of simple indignation against 
evil and love for righteousness which, when it is abso- 
lutely fresh and pure, is the most strong and persist- 
ent power in the world. These are the reasons why 
it is a sad loss when the fighter with wickedness turns 
his struggle against wickedness into angry attacks on 
men against whom perhaps their wickedness has first 
provoked him, but whom he has come now to hate 
for themselves. This was the spirit of our Lord's dis- 
ciples when they wanted to call down fire on the vil- 
lage of Samaria. This was Luther's spirit when at 
Marburg he lost sight of the simple fight with error 
and plunged into a personal attack on Zwingle. It 
is the danger of all earnest men. It seems sometimes 
to be so inseparable from earnestness that the world 



82 THE BATTLE OP MFE. 

thinks that it must not call it a vice or take 
any note of it in the earnest man. But no really 
earnest man can be so self-indulgent. Ever he must 
struggle to know who his true enemy is, and to fight 
finally with him alone. With wickedness we may be 
unmitigatedly indignant. AVe may hate it with all 
our hearts. Towards it there is no chance, there is 
no right, of indulgence or consideration. But with 
the wicked man, because he is both man and wicked- 
ness, we may be at once full of anger and full of love, 
and out of the spirit of the highest justice, both to 
him and to ourselves, insist always that it shall be the 
wickedness and not the man that we hate ! 

Now let me turn away from words which may ap- 
pear to be addressed only to certain classes of my 
hearers, and let me try to speak of things w^hichmust 
concern us all. Inside of all the other battles we are 
fighting, there is the battle with ourselves. Inside of 
the battle with the world for the world, which the 
great champions of righteousness are fighting in their 
great way, and which you and I, I hope, are fighting 
in our little way, there lies the battle which every 
true man is always fighting with himself for himself 
— himself the hostile enemy, himself the precious 
prize. Oh, how real sometimes all that must become 
to the great workers for mankind ! While Howard 
is travelling all over Europe, from prison to prison, 
while Clarkson has his hand upon the fetters of the 
slave, while Francke is gathering his orphans around 
him and struggling with their ignorance, while Gar- 
rison is striving to free the slave, sometimes the 
heart of each of them must have grown sick and 



THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 83 

faint with the freshly heard sound of its own inner 
conflict ; sometimes each of them must have turned 
aside and shut the door upon all the tumult of the 
world and left the great cause for an hour to take 
care of itself, while he fought with himself for him- 
self, — with himself his own enemy, for himself his 
own prize. There are verses enough, you know, in 
St. Paul's Epistles which let us see that struggle with 
himself going on all the time underneath the other 
struggle with the men of Jerusalem and Athens. 
While the foreign war was raging, the home country 
also was all up in arms. How such men must have 
thought often within themselves that the foreign war 
would be as nothing, would be a very easy thing, 
if only there were peace at home. " I could convert 
the world easily," the missionary must often find 
.himself saying, ''if only I had a solid ground to 
stand upon, if only my own life were not all soft and 
weak with sin and doubt." And sometimes, too, the 
other thought must come, " What right have I to be 
busying myself with the world's miseries while all 
this unrest is tumultuous within me ? Why is it not 
best to shut in myself upon myself and fight my own 
battle out before I meddle with the bio^g^er battle ? " 

Such thoughts come naturally; but really it is 
good, no doubt, that the two strifes, the outer and 
the inner, the strife with self and the strife with tlie 
world's sin, should go on together. The man who 
knew no enemy Avithin himself, who was so absorbed 
in fighting with the world's sin that he grew uncon 
scions of his own inner life, by and by would become 
arrogant and superficial. Such men the world has 



84 THE BATTI^E OF LIFE. 

often seen among its philanthropists. The man who 
is totally wrapped up in the war within him, the war 
with himself for his own life, grows selfish and grows 
morbid. The two must go on together. Each keeps 
the other healthy and true. Fight with your own 
sin, and let that fight keep you humble and full of 
sympathy when you go out into the world and 
strike at the sin of which the world is full. Fight 
with the world's sin, and let the needs of that fight 
make you aware of how much is wrong, and make 
you eager that everything shall be right within your- 
self. Here is the balance and mutual ministry of 
self-care and world-care which makes the truest man 
the healthiest philanthropist. 

Surely it always must be full of meaning, that 
Christ Himself, before He began his struggles with the 
Pharisees and Scribes, went out into the desert and 
struggled with Himself. It must have been present 
with Him ever afterwards, that wrestling with the 
evil spirit and all the knowledge of Himself which it 
called out. Many a time the wilfulness, and narrow- 
ness, and selfishness which He saw in the faces which 
surrounded Him in some crowd in the temple must 
have been clearer to Him and easier to understand, 
because they were just the passions which had tried 
to take possession of His own heart, and failed, dur- 
ing those long terrible days in the dark wilderness. 
And oh ! my friends, there is no way in which what- 
ever personal struggles with faithlessness and sin we 
may have gone through can be made to keep their 
freshness and power, and at the same time be kept 
from becoming a source of morbid wretchedness, no 



THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 85 

way that is half so efficient as that they should con- 
stantly be called on to light up for us the same sort 
of struggles, in other men, and give us the power to 
help them with intelligence and sympathy. Demand 
that lofty service of every deep experience through 
which you pass. Demand that it shall help you 
understand and aid the battles of your brethren, 
and then the devils of memory which haunt your 
life may be turned into strong angels, by whose help 
you may do the will of God, and be in some small 
way the saviour of mankind. 

Our allusion to the conflict of Jesus in the desert 
reminds us of how, to this internal strife which a 
man carries on with his own nature, St. Paul's de- 
scription of the nature of all spiritual conflict espe- 
cially applies. " Not against flesh and blood " was the 
wrestling of Jesus always. It was with the sin of Cai- 
aphas and Herod, not with Caiaphas and Herod, that 
He strove. But here especially in the desert, it was 
directly with the spirit of evil, and not with any of its 
outward forms or symbols, that He struggled. And 
is it not true that just in proportion as all men's 
strifes with their own selves grow serious and earnest, 
the)^ are always pressing in and in, and growing to 
be less and less struggles with the mere forms and 
symbols of wrong-doing, more and more profound 
contests with our own true selves and with our sins ? 
Some young man here begins the noble work of try- 
ing to be a better man. He knows that it is no mere 
hoisting of holiday sails and idly slipping under 
pleasant breezes into another life. He knows that he 
has got to fight. But fight with what — with whom ? 



8G THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 

Where is his enemj^ ? And then see how he begins on 
the outside and works inward as the combat deepens. 
First the enemy seems to be in the circumstances 
and conditions of his life. He fights with those. 
He gives up the business that is always full of temp- 
tation. He breaks off the acquaintance that keeps 
him in the low atmosphere. He moves out of the 
house where the wicked people live. He abandons 
the reading which kept certain bad thoughts before 
his mind. All that is good ; but when he stands with 
all that done, the sense comes over him that his en- 
emy is not conquered yet. He has only stripped 
himself for the fight. The real fight has not yet be- 
gun. 

Then he goes farther in. More personal, more a 
part of himself than his associations and his circum- 
stances, are his habits. If a man's circumstances are 
like his clothes, his habits are like his very body. 
With these habits he begins to wrestle next. He 
will not drink ; he will not swear ; he will not lie. 
All that is very good again. Most good. But once 
more, when all this is accomplished and the bad 
habits are all cast away, still the jnan stands aware 
that his self is not conquered. That mysterious cen- 
tre of his being which is the He that thinks and feels 
and not merely does good or bad, but is good or bad, 
is the man ; that still is in deep conflict with itself. 
The sin which is internal strife is not yet cast out 
there. 

And then comeJB very often something else, with 
which in these days we are most familiar. The man 
who has found that the real struggle of his life is not 



THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 87 

with his associations and is not with his habits, often 
looks back to his hereditation, as he calls it. How 
familiar that long word has grown with certain very 
estimable kinds of people! ''I have inherited all 
these bad dispositions. I have to fight with all that 
my forefathers have been. Pit}^ me ! pity aie ! for 
my dead ancestors are too much for my living will." 
So the poor victim cries as he feebly^ settles himself 
down to what he holds beforehand is a losina* fio^ht. 
It has its own despair already in itself, this hopeless 
struggle with hereditation wdiich, as so many of our 
teachers now depict it, is so peculiarly, so literally, a 
wrestling against flesh and blood. 

These are the several outer circles. The fight in 
them comes to seem either useless or hopeless. And 
then at last, if the man is thoroughly in earnest, then 
at last the man gets into the heart and centre of it 
all. Not in his circumstances, not in his habits, not 
in his hereditations, but in himself, in a heart ready to 
give itself up to the worse instead of to the better 
powers of the world, in a soul that loves baseness, fri- 
volity, and falseness, there lies the real enemy. Oh, 
the great strength whicli comes when that discovery is 
made ! And, feeling that now at last the real battle has 
begun, the man solemnly, solidly settles himself down 
to the conquest of himself. The army which has 
carried by storm one fortification after another and 
found that it has only gained possession of an out- 
post, more or less insignificant, now sits down before 
the central citadel and the real siege begins. Then 
comes the true calling up of all the powers. Then 
comes humility, and by humility self-understanding. 



88 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 

and in self-understanding strength. Then comes 
that earnest cry for God's help which always brings 
its answer. Then conies the giving of the soul's own 
weakness into the abundant strength of Christ. 
Then comes the great reality of prayer. All of 
these, when the man has at last got to the centre of 
his sin, and is at last fighting with himself for his own 
soul. 

My friends, do you know the meaning of all that? 
Are you fighting that battle for self-conquest? If 
you are, you know with what a true exhilaration that 
which seems such a cruel and unnatural necessity of 
life may occupy and inspire the soul. Almost with a 
shout the man exclaims, " I will subdue myself for 
goodness and for God ! " And though no shout is 
heard, though men beside him do not hear a sound, 
though the battlefield is in some inmost secret cham- 
ber of his most secluded life, though the fairest 
flowers of his own self-content are being torji to 
pieces by the wrestler's feet, yet still there is — do not 
you know it, many of you ? — a deep, strong, solemn 
joy as the night draws nearer to the day, and the self 
with which we fight grows weaker, and the self for 
which we fight grows freer, — a joy deep and strong 
and solemn with which no other pleasure in human 
living can compare. 

And also there grows up a great charity and hope 
for every other man who is fighting the good fight 
Avith his sins — a charity and hope which is alone 
reward enough for all our pain ! 

May God lead all of us speedily in, through all the 
outer struggles, to this inmost fight of all ! May we 



THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 89 

begin it now, and never end it till our sin is dead ! 
May the Captain of our salvation be our leader and 
our strength ! May we be full of courage, because the 
battle which we fight is not our own alone, but God's, 
and at the last may we be conquerors in Him ! 



VI. 

THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 

" No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost." 
— I. Cor. xii. 3. 

These words must mean their deepest, or else they 
cannot mean anything for us. They were written 
long ago when Christianity was new. To say, then, 
that Jesus Christ was the divine Lord of the world 
was something different in the demand it made upon 
a man's powers and character from what it is to-day. 
In some respects it must have been much harder then 
than now : in some respects much easier. We cannot 
tell wholly, I suppose, what Paul's verse meant in the 
ears of the Corinthians who heard it first. But when 
we bring his words over to our own time and try to 
realize them now, it is evident that they mean nothing 
unless they mean their deepest. ''No man can say 
that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost." Evi- 
dently it is not true that a divine help is needed 
simply to declare as an article of one's creed, a con- 
viction of one's mind, that Jesus Christ is Master of 
the world. Thousands of people are doing that all 
the time, and doing it evidently by themselves, not 
"by the Holy Ghost" at all, often saying the great 
words wilfully, obstinately, controversially, with a 
spirit and an impulse so essentially earthly that we 



THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 91 

know they did not come from heaven ; with a vehe- 
mence so unholy and unspiritual that we know it is 
not the work of the Holy Spirit. Evidently it cannot 
be the mere saying of the words or the mere accept- 
ance of the fact that proves a divine influence. It 
must be the saying of the words, " Jesus is the Lord," 
filled with the most earnest faith and the richest ex- 
perience ; the saying of them by a man to whom they 
represent the deepest fact and the most powerful im- 
pulse of his life. It must mean this, and, if it does, 
then it involves one of the greatest and most urgent 
subjects of which we can think or speak. That sub- 
ject is the dignity and greatness of a faith in Christ. 
It is only, so says St. Paul, it is only by an action 
which outgoes his own powers and shares the strength 
of God that a man is able to own Christ as the master 
of his life. 

The Dignity and Greatness of faith ! There are two 
classes of people, very different from one another, 
both of whom deny the proposition which I have 
announced and of which I wish to speak. The first 
denier is the ordinary flippant church-member or par- 
tisan controversialist, who treats faith as if it were 
one of the easiest and most casual functions of a 
human life, and a confession of faith as if it were an 
indifferent sort of action to be slipped in almost any- 
where, between two other acts of wholly other kinds. 
Such a man dishonors faith by the trivialness with 
which he treats it. His denial of its dignity and 
greatness is a practical one, and while he makes it 
he may be all the time talking the grandest talk 
about the faith which all his life discredits. The 



92 THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 

other denier is more serious, and his denial deals with 
the whole idea and theory of faith. Many and many 
men there are to-day who most deliberately hold and 
teach that the idea of man's depending upon a loftier 
power than himself is a delusion of human immatur- 
ity, that it belongs to the infancy of the human mind, 
that for the world or for any man to give it up and^ 
count the human life sufficient for itself is a distinct 
advance, that faith is fetich-worship gradually passing 
out into the light, slowly becoming that full enlight- 
enment of man in which, when it becomes complete, 
there shall be no longer any such thing possible 
as faith. In protest against both denials, the prac- 
tical denial of the frivolous communicant in our 
churches, and the dogmatic denial of the positivist 
philosopher, we want to assert the dignity and great- 
ness of faith. I would like to think that as I speak 
I see two faces before me — one the easy, careless 
face of the commonplace professor of religion. Look- 
ing into his trifling eyes I would like to say : " Poor 
soul, this earthly, uninspired thing of yours is not 
real faith. No man can have real faith but by the 
Holy Spirit." The other face shall be the earnest, 
puzzled, eager face of the young man who is trying, 
as he has been taught, to despise and pity the victims 
of the supernatural. To him one wants to say : " Do 
not dare to despise what is the noblest act that man 
has ever tried to do. You degrade yourself when 
you do that. It is only by a divine, Holy Spirit that 
any man can have faith." 

Begin with this, then : that the greatness of any 
act is to be estimated by the faculties of man which it 



THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 93 

employs. It is a greater act for a man to write a book 
than for him to build a fence, because the writing 
of the book demands the use of deeper powers. The 
man must think, — at least a little, — and arrange his 
thought, and give it utterance in language. To govern 
a State requires still nobler faculties, faculties rarer, 
finer, more profound, faculties that must be summoned 
for their work out of yet deeper chambers of our hu- 
man nature. When I know what faculties any man's 
work requires, at once I know wliere that work 
stands in comparative dignity among the works of 
men. When a new act of man is offered to me Avhich 
I have not been called upon to estimate before, I ask 
myself what powers the man will have to use who 
does that act, and when I know that, then I am sure 
that I can judge it rightly. 

This is the test that we must apply here : What 
faculties are needed in an act of faith ? What powers 
must a man use who says with all his heart of an 
unseen Jesus, " He is my Lord and Master " ? Let us 
see — and first of all there is the power of dealing 
with the unseen at all. Back from the visible to the 
invisible which lies behind it, the mind of man is al- 
ways pressing ; and as it presses back, there are new 
powers coming out into consciousness and use. The 
first man in his immaturity deals with things. Man 
as he grows maturer deals also with ideas. The 
things are visible and tangible. The ideas no eye has 
seen, no hand has ever touched. Subtle, elusive, and 
yet growing to be more real to the mind of the man 
who truly deals with them than are the bricks 
of which his house is built, or the iron tool with 



94 THE DIGNITY AXD GREATNESS OF FAITH. 

which he does his work, the great ideas of justice, of 
beauty, of sublimity, become at once the witnesses 
and the educators of man's deeper powers which 
must come out to do their work. The birth of 
the power of recognizing and dealing with ideas, the 
birth of ideality, is an epoch in the history of the 
world or of a man. Or, again, you know your friend 
by the seeing of the eye ; all the distinct intercourses 
of the senses introduce your life to his; and then 
your friend goes away from you, out of your sight, 
to China or Peru ; and as your power of friendship 
reaches out to follow him, as the thought of him 
takes the place of the sight of him, as association, 
and memory, and hope, and imagination come out 
at your need to bind your life with his, — is not your 
friendship growing greater with the new faculties it 
requires, has not your love for your unseen friend 
become a nobler exercise than any delight in his 
visible presence possibly could be? These are in- 
stances and illustrations of the glories of the faculty 
in man by which he has to do with things which he 
cannot see. And when the unseen one is Christ, a 
being whom the man never has seen, whom yet he is 
compelled to realize, not as an idea, but as a living 
person capable of being loved, and trusted, and 
obeyed, there surely is a noble demand there for one 
of the loftiest of human faculties ; and the loftiness 
of the faculty which must be used in doing it bears 
testimony to the loftiness of the act which the man 
does who says of the unseen Jesus Christ, "• He is 
my Lord." 

Another of the faculties which is involved in faith, 



THE DIGNITY AND GKEATXESS OF FAITH. 95 

and whose necessity is a sign that a true act of faith 
is one of the completest acts which man can do, is 
the faculty of personal admiration and trust. In 
its fullest exercise faith is personal. We speak in- 
deed of faith in principles, and that is a noble and 
ennobling thing ; but the fullest trust comes with the 
perception of trustworthy character, and the entire 
reliance of one nature on another. Is it a great 
power or a great weakness in a man's life that makes 
him capable of doing that? I am tempted, in answer 
to that question, to jDoint you simply to that which I 
am sure that you have all seen and felt, the strauge 
aad sometimes terrible deterioration which so often 
comes in men's characters as they grow up from 
boyhood into manhood, leaving the j^ears of docility 
behind them, pass into the years of self-reliance and 
independence. The poetry and beauty and richness 
of a boy's life lie in his power of admiration for, 
and trust in, something greater than himself. If you 
fathers make your homes what they ought to be, the 
boys will find the object of that admiration and trust 
in you. If you will not let them find it there, they will 
find it somewhere else. Somewhere they will surely 
find it. And in their admiration and their trust, the 
outreaching and uplifting of their life will come. 
What does it mean when men as they grow older 
become narrow, sordid, and machine-like, when a 
vulgar self-content comes over them, and all the 
limitations of a finished life that hopes for and 
expects no more than what it is makes the sad 
picture which we see in hosts of men's middle life ? 
Is it not certainly that those men have ceased to 



96 THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 

admire and ceased to trust? The objects of their 
chiklhood's trust and admiration they have out- 
grown, and like young scholars who imagine that 
the story-books of infancy are the only books in the 
world, and so, when those books cease to interest the 
maturing mind, lay by their power of reading as if 
tliere were no further use for it, so these men, when 
they can no longer admire and trust their fellow-men 
completely, as they used to do when they were boys, 
think that the faculty of perfect trust and admiration 
has no further use. The blight that falls upon their 
admiring and trusting natures is the token of what 
a lofty and life-giving faculty it is which they have 
23ut out of use. It was this faculty which made 
them at every moment greater than themselves, 
which kept them in communion with the riches of a 
higher life, which preserved all the enthusiasm of 
active energy, and yet preserved humility which held 
all the other faculties to their best work. This is the 
faculty whose disuse makes the mature life of so 
many men barren and dreary, and whose regenera- 
tion, wlien the man is lifted up into the new admira- 
tion and the new trust, the admiration for and trust 
in God, makes a large part of the glory of the full- 
grown life of faith. 

One other quality I mention which must be in the 
man who sends liis faith out into the unseen and 
fastens it in trust and admiration on a divine person. 
I know not what to call it except a hopeful sense of 
need, — not only a sense of need, for that, if it be 
not hopeful, may merely grovel and despair, — but a 
sense of personal deficiency, filled and lighted up all 



THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 97 

through and through with the conviction that some- 
where in the world, in some place not desperately 
beyond its reach, there lies, waiting for its finding, 
the strength and the supply that it requires. This is 
the faculty in which has lain the coiled mainspring 
of all human progress. Barbarism, filled with the 
hopeful sense of need, has pressed onward and on- 
ward into civilization. Ignorance, hopefully know- 
ing its need, has scaled the heavens and fathomed 
the seas and cleft the rocks for knowledge. Man, in 
all ages, has struggled and achieved, has wrestled 
with his present condition and laid his daring hand 
on higher things, under the power of this faculty in 
which were met the power of his clear perception of 
his deficiencies and his deep conviction that his defi- 
ciencies might be supplied. Is this a noble faculty 
or not? I would be willing to appeal again to j^our 
own consciousness. There are times when this fac- 
ulty is very sluggish and dull within you, and there 
are other times when it seems full of life. Some 
days there are when the story of your need falls on 
your ears like an unmeaning tale ; when either you 
are self-contented and feel no lack in heart or brain 
or character, or, feeling it, have no hope but that you 
must go on forever the poor, half-developed, crippled 
thing you are. Then there are other da5^s when you 
look through and through yourself, and any thought 
of keeping on constantly just as you see yourself 
now is terrible. You know your sin and sordidness. 
But at the same time voices are calling you to come 
and get the things that you require. The whole 
great voice of all the world seems to be promising 



98 THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 

you escape and supply. As deep and strong as the 
sense of need is the hope. Of those two days, which 
is the greater? On which of them are you the 
stronger man? Is this faculty, which on the second 
of these days is awake in you, a degradation or an 
exaltation of your life? There can be but one 
answer, only one. You know you never are so 
great, never so thoroughly a man, as when with 
manly honesty you see yourself through and through, 
and, filled with shame, are yet inspired and held up 
by hope. But all that must come to pass, this fac- 
ulty of hopeful neediness must wake and live, before 
a man can with true faith call Jesus Christ, the 
Saviour of the world, his Lord. 

And now once more I say, it is the faculties 
which any act demands which indicate the degree 
of dignity and greatness in that act. Behold, then, 
what we have reached. In the act of faith, by 
which you or I trust ourselves to the keeping and 
make ourselves the servants of Christ, there must 
meet these faculties, or else the act cannot be done : 
the power of dealing with the unseen, the power of 
personal loyalty and trust, the power of a hopeful 
sense of need. Those three great powers in their 
aggregate meet in the man who is Christ's servant. 
Now what I claim is this, that the belief and per- 
sonal devotion for whose attainment that aggregate 
of qualities must meet is a most great and glorious 
action. I do not say now that it is an action possi- 
ble or impossible, or Avhether the man who thinks 
with all his soul that he is doing it is congratulating 
himself upon the great fact of his life, or hugging to 



THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 99 

his heart the most shadowy of all delusions. I only 
say that the description of the act involves a picture 
of the most complete and lofty and tlioroughly 
human action which a man can be conceived of as 
doing ; and that if man, having thought himself 
capable of such an action, should be completely 
proved to be incapable of it, his whole life Avould 
have suffered an incalculable loss. The world of 
human existence would have been robbed of its sun- 
light and its sky. On this I am sure that we ought 
to insist. There are bold, trenchant writers and 
talkers to-day who are congratulating the world that 
the days of faith are over, that the glorious liberty 
of unbelief has come. That certainly will never 
do. You must not pluck the jewel off of the fore- 
head of the man who has counted himself a king and 
then ask him to thank you as if you had broken fet- 
ters from his wrists. You must not pull down the 
sun out of the sky and then bid men rejoice that they 
have escaped from the slavery of sunlight. If there 
is no God whom I can come to and obey and trust, 
I want to know the dreadful fact, and not to go on 
thinking that there is ; for it is better for every man to 
know the fact, however dreary and dreadful it may 
be, than to believe a lie, however sweet and gracious. 
But that is something utterly different from saying 
that it would not be better for us all if faith were 
possible, and that to be robbed of the possibility of 
faith is the desolation and ruin of human life. 

One w^ants to say the same thing to men who do 
believe with all their hearts, men who believe with 
all the strength of an experience which no man can 



100 THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 

disturb, in the possibility and the reality of faith. 
I seem to hear a certain sort of apologetic tone 
among men of faith, which is not good, Tliey some- 
times seem to plead that their faith may be left to 
them, much as a baby pleads that he may keep his 
toys, or a lame man that he may keep his crutches. 
It is the appeal of weakness. The man who trusts 
God sometimes seems almost to say to his unbelieving 
brother, " Forgive me. I am not as strong as you are. 
I cannot do without this help. You are more strong 
and do not need it. But let me keep it still." No 
open foe of faith can do faith so much harm as that 
kind of believer. Shall the disciple be ashamed of 
that which is the glory of his manhood, its highest 
reach, requiiing the combination of its noblest powers ? 
The only thing to be said about such feeble-hearted 
faith as that is that it is not faithful enough to know 
the essential dignity of faith. It is a sick man apolo- 
gizing to death because he is not quite ready yet to 
die. It is the meagreness of health in him that prompts 
his poor apology. Let him grow healthier and he be- 
gins to look not down to death with apologies, but up 
to life with hopes and aspirations. So let the weak 
disciple grow more strong in faith, and he will have 
no longer feeble words of shame and self-excuse to 
say about his trust in Christ ; only his whole life will 
grow one earnest prayer for an increase of faith, as 
the child's life is one continued hope and prayer for 
manhood. 

O young disciples, whatever other kind of false- 
ness to your faith you may fall into, may you be 
saved at least from ever being ashamed of it.. It is 



THE DIGXITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 101 

the noblest, the clivinest, thing on earth. You may 
have only got hold of the very borders of it, but if 
in any true sense you can say, " Jesus is the Lord," 
you have set foot into the region wherein man lives 
his completest life. Go on, without one thought or 
dream of turning back, and with no shamefaced hid- 
ing of the new mastery under which you are trying 
to live. If 3^our Christian service is too small in its 
degree for you to boast of, it is too precious in its 
kind for you to be ashamed of. Go on forever crav- 
ing and forever winning more faith and obedience, 
and so learning more and more forever that faith 
and obedience are the glory and crown of human 
life. 

But now let us return to our text. We have been 
talking about the dignity and greatness of faith. 
But St. Paul says something else about it. It is the 
gift and inspiration of God. ''No man can say that 
Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost." Not 
merely, it is a great and noble thing to feel through 
all life the grasp and influence of Jesus, but this 
great and noble thing no man can do unless God 
the Holy Ghost inspires and helps him to do it. This 
statement of St. Paul seems to me to have at its 
heart the profoundest and most beautiful conception 
of the relation between God and man. Suppose that 
it were not true. Suppose that faith in Christ 
being, as I have tried to show it, the crowning act 
of man, it vv ere yet an act which man could do with- 
out any inspiration or help of God; suppose that 
in this, or any other of the greatest actions of his 
life, man could first conceive the wish to do it all 



102 THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 

by and of himself, and then could quietly gather up 
his powers and go and do it all by and of himself, — 
have you not in such a supposition broken the abso- 
luteness, the essentialness, the permanency, of the 
whole relation between our life and God's ? The true 
idea of that relationship involves the presence of 
God in every highest activity of man. It often 
seems to me as if men had got such a low and in- 
adequate conception of all this ! Men talk, very 
religious men, as if God were a sort of reserve force 
to be called in when He was needed — a sort of last 
resort when man's strength failed. And so I some- 
times think that the whole Christian thought of 
man's being dependent upon God continually seems 
to a good many people like something cowardly, un- 
manly, a miserable calling up of the reserve when we 
ought to be fighting out the battle for ourselves. 
The thought of God which Christ came to reveal, the 
thought of God of which all Christ's own life was 
full, is something totally different from that. To 
Christ's thought God and man are part of one sys- 
tem — one structure, one working-force. To separate 
them is not simply to deny man a power that he 
needs : it is to break a unity, and to set a part of 
the power to the attempt to do what the whole 
power ought to do as one. The strength, the force, 
whicli is appointed to lift your burden, to run your 
race, to find your truth, to hold the canopy of faith- 
fulness over your life, is not you. It is you and 
God. For you to try to do it alone is unnatural. It 
is almost as if the engine tried to run without its 
steam, or as if the chisel tried to carve without the 



THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 103 

artist. It is engine and steam that are to make the 
running-power. It is artist and chisel that are to 
carve the statue. It is God and you that live your 
life. For you to try to live it alone is to try to 
do all the work with one part of the power. God 
is not a crutch coming in to help your lameness, un- 
necessary to you if you had all your strength. He 
is the breath in your lungs. The stronger you are, 
the more thoroughly you are yourself, the more you 
need of it, the more you need of Him. 

How clear this became in the life of Jesus Him- 
self I Tliere was humanity at its best. Could it do 
without those supplies of God which the lower hu- 
manity required ? Did it throw away its crutch and 
walk in its own self-suflficient strength ? Oh, no ! It 
breathed deeper than any other human life has ever 
breathed of the breath of God. It filled itself with 
His Spirit. It did notliing by itself, but everything 
with, in, by Him. Oh, my dear friends, there is the 
everlasting testimony that utter dependence on God 
is no accident of man's sin or misfortune, but is the 
intrinsic and eternal necessity and glory of man's 
nature. 

And so when man comes to that which I have 
claimed to be his completing act, when he says that 
Jesus is the Lord, it is not strange that he cannot do 
that alone, not by himself, a poor half-life, crippled 
and broken. It needs the whole of him — and he is 
not the whole of himself unless God is in him. He 
cannot do it "but by the Holy Ghost." The man 
with a duty says, " Jesus is the Lord," and he is 
brave. The man with a temptation says, " Jesus is 



104 THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 

the Lord," and he is firm. The man with a suffering 
says, ^^ Jesus is the Lord," and he is patient. The 
man with a bewilderment says, "Jesus is the Lord," 
and he sees light. Is it not a true and precious part 
of the value of those great experiences, that in each 
of them there is both the struggle of the human soul 
up to God, and also the uprising of the divine soul 
carrying the man deeper into itself — that neither of 
those men says " Jesus is the Lord " but by the Holy 
Ghost? 

There is one other point of which I wish to speak 
before I close. I have been magnifying faith. I have 
been painting it as what I know it is, the consummate 
action of the human soul, requiring the soul's best 
faculties working at their best. I can imagine while I 
speak thus that some hearts here may be asking them- 
selves, " What then ? If faith be such a supreme act, 
must it not be the privilege of a few, must it not be 
within the power only of the supreme souls ? Can I, 
one of the weakest and worldliest of men, can I do 
such an act, an act that needs such powers?" And 
so perhaps I may seem to have lifted the very thing 
which all men ought to do out of the possibility of 
many men. I would not leave any such doubt in any 
soul. God forbid that in trying to make faith seem 
glorious I should make it seem impossible ! But it is 
true of God's gifts always that the most complete of 
them are also the most possibly universal.' Is it not 
so? Think of this illustration : wealth is a lower gift 
than health, and wealth is evidently limited in its 
possibility ; all men are not intended to be rich — but 
health is for all men. It is unnatural for any man to 



THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 105 

be sick. And so of admiration and of love. To be 
loved is better than to be admired — and admiration 
is the privilege of a few brilliant natures, while love 
is within the reach of any pure and loving heart. And 
so of the subtler beauties of art and the simpler beau- 
ties of nature. Art is the privilege of the few, but 
nature opens her treasures wide. "■ There is no price 
set on the lavish summer, and June may be had by 
the poorest comer." But nature is as much more beau- 
tiful as she is more free than art. It is a splendid law 
of all God's world, a law that makes the whole world 
shine with the splendor of His love, that everywhere 
the finest is the freest. The lower blessings are often 
the exceptions, but the higher blessings are meant to 
be not the exception, but the rule. If this be so, then 
how must it be with that blessing which outgoes all 
others, the blessing of faith, the blessing of living 
under the perpetually recognized lordship of Christ? 
The finest of all gifts of God — may we not look for 
it to be the freest too ? Free as the air, which is the 
most precious thing the world contains, and yet 
struggles as nothing else in all the world struggles 
to give itself away — crowds itself in wherever it 
can go, and moves whatever will let itself be moved 
by its elastic pressure. 

And this grows clearer and surer still when we re- 
member that the part of us to which the pressure of 
God, the power of his Holy Ghost asking to be ad- 
mitted to govern our lives, applies for its admission 
is the part which is most universally open and active 
in all the degrees of mankind ; namely, the moral part. 
Think how often you are ready to listen to a poor ig- 



106 THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 

norant creature's judgment of right and wrong, and 
pay the deepest reverence to it, when you would not 
care in the least for that same creature's judgment of 
any question of the intellect. Think how a little 
child can look you in the eye with his pure, clear 
glance, as you are telling your well-disguised false- 
hood, and say, "- That is not true," and make you 
quail. Think how you can touch a child's conscience 
long before you can waken his brain. All these are 
illustrations and signs of the universalness of moral 
life. It is in all men and in all times of each man's 
life. And so a blessing which must enter by that 
door can find in every nature a door to enter by. A 
Holy Spirit, having its power in its holiness, need not 
be shut out of any heart that is capable of knowing 
holiness and being holy. Therefore no soul of dunce 
or boor or little child is too low to be brought by the 
Holy Spirit to the place where, answering back by 
the divine within it to the divine above it, it maj^ say 
that " Jesus is the Lord." I have claimed already 
that no soul is too high to find in that announcement 
of its faith the consummation of its life. Here, then, 
is where the highest and the lowest meet. Here 
is where they have met through all the ages. Glori- 
ous thinkers, great strong workers, sufferers whose 
lives were miracles of patience, all of these singing 
as they went their ways, "Jesus is Lord, Jesus is 
Lord." And all around them, and in among them, 
dull, plodding souls, and minds whose thought was 
all confused and bewildered with emotion, and little 
children, with their crude clear pictures in their 
simple brains, all these too singing, in their several 



THE DIGNITY AND GREATNESS OF FAITH. 107 

tones and with their several clearness, " Jesus is Lord, 
Jesus is Lord." 

Would you be able to say that, to join that great 
human chorus, to claim Christ for your Lord with 
some especial claim of your own which shall make 
the great human chorus which claims Him for the 
world a little more complete ? You can do it. But 
you can do it only " by the Holy Ghost." Only by 
letting God enter into you can you go up to God, 
and own with joy and thankfulness the mastery of 
his Son. And oh, my friends, remember that the 
owning of Christ's mastery here is but the beginning 
of the participation in Christ's glory in heaven. 

Into that may we all come at last by His great 
lore ! 



vn. 

THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 

" Then thought I to understand this, but it was too hard for me ; 
Until I went into the Sanctuary of God ; then understood I the 
end of these men." — Psalms Ixxiii. 16, 17. 

This is called one of the psalms of Asaph. About 
Asaph nobody knows very much : only that he was 
a friend of David, the master of his music, and evi- 
dently, from his writings, a man of very beautiful 
religious and poetic spirit. If we can distinguish 
between his psalms and those of his mightier friend, 
we should say that Asaph's were more calm and even 
and tranquil, more pensive and placid, with less of 
triumphant exultation or of profound depression than 
David's. 

But in this psalm Asaph is sorely perplexed and 
troubled. How old the bewilderments of the world 
are ! I think it makes our own difficulties harder and 
easier at once to bear when we think how many long- 
forgotten souls have struggled in them too in the 
years that are past. Here almost three thousand years 
ago is a poor man who can make nothing out of the 
same fact, precisely, which has kept thousands of 
people wondering and questioning this last week. 
You recognize it the moment that you open the psalm. 
"I was envious at the foolish," he says, "when I saw 
the prosperity of the wicked." The prosperity of the 



THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 109 

wicked I that critical puzzle of all times, the apparent 
absence of justice in this life of ours. ''They are 
not in trouble like other folk, neither are they plagued 
like other men." And they say, "- How doth God 
know, and is there knowledge in the Most High? 
Behold, these are the ungodl}^ ; these prosper in the 
world; they increase in riches. Verily, I have 
cleansed my heart in vain and washed my hands in 
innocency." That is the puzzle ; as old as Asaph, 
as young as some struggling child of God who knows 
that his uprightness is keeping him poor and that his 
unscrupulous neighbor is growing rich by his side 
to-day. 

And then comes Asaph's escape from the puzzle : 
"I thought to understand this," he says, " but it was 
too hard for me ; until I went into the Sanctuary of 
God ; then understood I the end of these men." 
The escape perhaps is not so familiar as the puzzle. 
He goes into the sanctuary of God, he goes to 
church, and there he finds a light that makes the 
dark things clear, and the cloud scatters, and he un- 
derstands it all. At once we feel that we are talking 
with the Hebrew. Here is the man to whom the 
temple was the centre of everything. There, not 
merely in burning shekinah, but in the deep-felt spir- 
itual sympathy, his God abode, and there with his 
deep, strong, trustful love, and fear for his God, he 
was used to go to find Him. It was different from 
the way we go to church. There Avas nothing hard, 
dull, or routinelike in it. We cannot read the Psalms 
without seeing what a spring and life and freshness, 
what a holy curiosity and eagerness and affection 



110 THE SAKCTUAllY OF GOD. 

there was in the hearts of the men who went up to 
the temple. " I was glad when they said unto me, 
Let us go up to the house of the Lord. Our feet shall 
stand in thy courts, O Jerusalem." Nobody can 
read the Old Testament without seeino^ something; 
very beautiful and grand, almost awful. In the 
midst of all the pettiness and wickedness, the small 
intrigues and quarrels that show us the littleness of 
that wonderful Hebrew people, one sight never loses 
its sublimity. It is the yearly gathering of the peo- 
ple from every corner of the land to the sacred fes- 
tival meeting at Jerusalem. The land swarms and 
hums with movement. The men of the seashore and 
the desert and the hills ; they are all stirring. Judah 
among his peaceful hills, the wild Simeonites from 
their home in the desert, Zebulon and Issachar from 
the rich plain-country, Asher from his abode along 
the bays and creeks, the Reubenites and Gadites 
from beyond the Jordan, and the sons of Naphtali 
from the far north, about the very roots of Lebanon, 
— they are all coming to appear before God. Every 
pass is full, every hill-side is alive. I think we can- 
not estimate the power in a nation's life of such 
a great annual symbolic pilgrimage. Every man 
brought his own burden, his own sorrow, his own 
sin. The problems of the year, the things that had 
perplexed them as they worked in the fields alone, or 
debated with their brethren, or met the troubles of 
the household — all these they brought to offer to the 
Lord, to seek solution for them in the higher, calmer 
atmosphere of the temple. There was the place 



THE SANCTUAEY OF GOD. Ill 

where their darkened and frio^htened understandincrs 
woukl find liglit and peace. 

It is an old-time picture. We do not go to cliui^li so 
now. Indeed it is not well that we should, altogetlier. 
There is a certain amount of localizing and narrowing 
of the idea of Deity about it which is not good. But 
there is much in it which it is good to keep, — at 
any rate impossible to make light of or despise. It 
is the longing for some sacred and secluded place in 
this low beset world. Luther dreamed of it when 
as a young monk he went up to Rome as if he were 
going up to heaven. As you go through the old 
cities of Europe or the East to-day, you see the weary 
man or woman turn aside into the cool, deep door of 
the great cathedral to say a prayer, or the more ab- 
stracted Oriental drop his shoes from his feet and fall 
prostrate, with the crowd all around him, before the 
city shrine as if he were far off in the desert or on 
some lonely hill. I am sure we cannot help being 
glad for all th^ good it .surely does them, for all the 
light they get, however dim, upon the hard questions 
of their lives. Woe to us if our more rational belief, 
instead of lifting all the earth up to heaA^en, only 
crowds down the hill-tops and leaves no heaven, and 
makes our Avhole earth earthly. It is sad indeed if 
our churches have no light to give to the problems 
that perplex our houses and our stores. 

But having said thus much, I want to speak of the 
subject that these verses will suggest this mornings 
not in tlie anc lent Hebrew, but in the modern Chris- 
tian way. Wliat made Asaph see clearer in the 
temple was that he met God there. We have been 



112 THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 

taught that not alone in temples made with hands, 
but everywhere in this great world of God the de- 
youf and loving soul may meet with God. We have 
been taught to see already in the distance that world 
where there shall be no temple except the present 
God. " God Almighty and the Lamb the temple of 
it." Not only to the temple, then, but to the present 
God, everywhere and always ; not only to the church, 
but to the divine presence by our side the problems 
of life may be carried. I want to speak of the new 
clearness that comes into many difficult questions, 
and especially into this question of the unequal lots 
of men when we survey them in connection with the 
thought of God. How does the bringing of life 
into God's presence make it intelligible ? 

There are, then, two persons I think to whom life 
seems pretty clear : the man who does not think or 
feel at all, and the man who thinks and feels very 
deeply. It is just like any complicated piece of 
machinery. The factory girl who sits at her loom 
and feeds it day by day learns just how ths machine 
takes up the thread she offers it and seems to under- 
stand the whole. The engineer who has the plans of 
all the engineering, from the boiler out to the thin- 
nest and subtlest steel finger that it moves; he, too, is 
troubled by no problems, but has grasped the working 
of the whole. Between the two come all the differ- 
ent degrees of intelligence and knowledge which see 
the mysteries more than the work-girl so as to be 
puzzled by them, but do not see them as much as 
the engineer so as to understand them. Just so it is 
with this world. The sluggish creature who just 



THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 113 

runs his little fragment of the universe and asks no 
questions further is troubled by no doubts. The 
finished soul who sees with God's eyes the great 
moral laws which govern all God's worlds, he, too, 
may rest in peace. Between the two the great mass 
of men, seeing tlie difficulties, but not seeing their 
solutions, live in disquietude and questionings. And 
when one has once outgrown the first repose of 
ignorance and thoughtlessness, he never can go back 
to it — there is no hope for him except to go on to 
the higher repose of faith and knowledge and sym- 
pathy with God. 

It is the moral difiiculties that give men most dis- 
quietude. It is not the riddles that try the intellect, 
but those that perplex the conscience. When we 
know that a certain thing is right, and that righteous- 
ness seems to be ignored in the working of the world, 
that is the sort of puzzle that haunts men and makes 
them really miserable. And of all moral riddles none 
is more perfect a perplexity than this, — that with a 
righteous God the Giver of every good gift, those 
good gifts should be bestowed upon unrighteousness. 
Not here and there as if. by accident, or as if an 
occasional exception was necessary in the working of 
a general law, but so generally as to seem sometimes 
universal. Unscrupulousness grows rich. Selfish- 
ness lives in luxury. We cannot open our eyes 
without seeing it. It requires no abstruse proof. The 
bewildering fact flashes itself into the poor man's eyes 
in the glitter of rich men's windows and flings itseli 
as if in scorn upon him, as their carriages spatter him 



114 THE SANCTUAKY OF GOD. 

with mud as he stands waiting and chafing on the 
crossing to let them pass. 

And first of all, if we feel the puzzle, we are sure 
that it is not one that comes to us out of any wanton- 
ness of God. It is one that we could not be spared. 
Let us always be much afraid of making our Heavenly 
Father a cruel monster who plays with the joy and 
misery of His poor children, and mocks them with 
questions for which they have no answers. The 
ancients in their fable of the sphinx who asked her 
riddles and destroyed those who tried but could not 
solve them, had just exactly this idea. They got it 
from the same experience of the mystery and con- 
tradictoriness of life of Avhich our later days are full. 
Let us keep clear of any such thought of God. If 
there are riddles in life, He does not set them 
wantonly. He is always leading us towards their 
solution as fast as we are able to go. We are cheated 
by our weakness and our ignorance. He is always 
trying to make us strong and wise, and so to save us 
from delusion. ''God is light, and in Him is no 
jiarkness at all." That is the first certainty about 
pim, which we must never lose ; for when that is 
gone, thpre is nothing left. 

After all, for pvery trouble and doubt of this life, 
except thosg >vhich pome directly from our own 
sinfulness, the only consolation that we really need 
is explanation. It is ^ great thing to know that. A 
really manly raan will ffsk nq other consolation. This 
world is not full of blunders of government that 
need to be reformed ; but it is full of obscurities that 
we long to have enlightened. The fire comes, and 



THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 115 

the consolation for the loss of your burnt store that 
you need is merely to see something of the purpose 
for which God permitted it to go, something of the 
spiritual blessing that may come to you out of its 
loss. Your child dies, and you do not ask for the 
child to come back again, but your heart does ache 
to know what it all means, to see something of what 
it is to die, to trace the dear life that is o^one into the 
bosom of the Eternal Love that has taken it. Every- 
where the devout and manly soul asks for explana- 
tion, and is sure that if it could reach that it would 
find all the consolation that it needs. Such trust it 
has in God. 

And now take the special bewilderment that puz- 
zled Asaph. Put yourself in his place. It ought not 
to be hard to do it, for unless you are either more or 
less than man you have been in his place many a 
time. You see a man whom you know to be wicked 
prospering. Everything he touches turns to gold. 
When the city is on fire, his house does not barn. 
When the pestilence goes stalking about, his house- 
hold is unbroken. A brighter life than any other 
house can show seems to flash through his glowing 
windows, in mockery of the starving honesty without. 
Health, honor, happiness, everything is there. That 
is what you and Asaph see. And now here, too, the 
consolation that your heart asks for is explanation. 
You believe in a God so sincerely that you do not 
say this state of things is wrong, but you do crave 
to see some glimpse of how it can be right. Then 
you go into the sanctuary of God ; somehow j^ou 
come into the presence of the Everlasting Father. 



116 THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 

You fill yourself with the sense of His immensity and 
goodness. You see perfect happiness and perfect 
holiness brought to their absolute consistency, nay 
their absolute identity in Him. Do you not begin 
to feel it already? Is there not coming a calm over 
the tumult, a light into the darkness? Is not the 
promise being fulfilled, " In thy light shall we see 
light?" Already you are beginning with Asaph, in 
the sanctuary, to understand " the end of these men." 
And what does this mean? Is it a mere expression 
of Asaph's triumph? Is it merely that he sees that 
by and by these prosperous men will have their 
troubles too, and hugs himself in the comfortable as- 
surance that if they are the richest, he is the safest, 
that he has made the best investment? Is he merely 
encouraged to live out his present misery in the an- 
ticipation of the certain time when things will be re- 
versed, when they will be down and he w^ill be up ? 
By and by their stores will burn. By and by their 
children will be taken too. That were a poor conso- 
lation to gloat over. Some vision of such a spirit 
does sometimes appear in some of those impreca- 
tory psalms, w^hich I hope that we all understand, 
that we read in church not as patterns of Christian 
temper, but as parts of the complete spiritual biog- 
raphy of a great but very imperfect man. But I do 
not think that the half-savage mood of some of those 
psalms is present here. When Asaph says that in 
the sanctuary of God he " understands the end of 
these men," he means that there became apparent to 
him the limits, the essential limits, of the life that 
they live. He has fallen into a low way of envying 



THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 117 

them their wealth, as if wealth was everything. He 
has been puzzled, because not being good they were 
rich, as if riches were the appropriate premium of 
goodness; but when he comes to stand with God all 
" that is altered. He comes in sight of larger circles 
of bliss. He sees that God has other rewards to give 
His chosen besides these little trinkets. Absorbed 
in the newly realized beauty of these higher things, 
he sees the worthlessness of the lower, and easily 
leaves them to the souls they satisfy. " Verily I say 
unto you they have their reward." So long as he 
knows no higher happiness than prosperity, it puzzles 
him that the bad should have it. So soon as he 
comes to know the infinitely higher joy of company 
with God, and sees that that can be given only to the 
good, — '' without holiness no man can see the 
Lord," — it no more troubles him that bad men 
should have the poor counterfeit of happiness, than 
it troubles the solid merchant, sitting in his houseful 
of plain and solid comfort, to see a miserable fop strut 
by in cheap and gaudy finery making believe and 
perhaps thinking that he is rich. 

I think we can illustrate what I mean. Two young 
students start out together. One is conscientious 
and thorough ; the other is showy and superficial. In 
a little while the patient, thorough worker is sur- 
prised to find all the world staring at and talking 
about his showj^ friend. He himself passes un- 
noticed, but wherever the flimsy scholarship of his 
friend goes men clap their hands and stare with 
wonder. It puzzles him. It seems all wrong. Does 
flippant show, then, win the prize that ought to fall 



118 THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 

to lionest knowledge ? But as he goes deeper, as he 
comes nearer to the court where the personal majesty 
of Truth herself abides, it all becomes clear. The 
joy of knowing Truth and being near to her out- 
shines all those lower glories. He sees that the 
popular applause and admiration is just the appro- 
priate reward of those lower devotions that have won 
them. He sees the end, the limit, of his brother 
student's life and gladly leaves him the honor he has 
won, pressing on himself into the sanctuary of the 
Truth, which is his own great reward, far above all 
honor and praise of men. 

Is not this, then, the explanation which is consola- 
tion? As we rise higher the larger circles of life 
open to us their value, and the smaller circles show 
their limits. Abraham is summoned out of his father- 
land, Ur of the Chaldees, and to every man of Ur who 
stays at home it seems doubtless very hard. They 
settle down on their snug farms, and are glad they 
have not to go. Perhaps to Abraham himself, al- 
though he goes, it seems hard too and very strange. 
But, then, the wider circles open. The Canaanite life 
appears. The Jewish life is born. Out of Jewry 
comes Christ. From Christ goes forth the Gospel; 
Christendom is born. All modern life, all promise 
of the millennial earth appears. How small beside 
this widening life of Abraham looks the limited life 
of Terah and Nahor and Haran, who were left be- 
liind at Ur! Who that stands high enough to see it 
all, who that has entered into the sanctuary of God, 
does not see the limit, the end of those men ? 

This puts in their true place, I think, all the lower 



THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. * 119 

aims and purposes of life. Because the heart's beat- 
ing is not the whole of life, it does not make the 
heart's beating unimportant. Because the outer life, 
the life of business and society, is but the smallest 
circle of existence, it is not therefore to be disre- 
garded. To use it, yet always to use it with refer- 
ence to its limits, always to understand its end, not 
to try to make it satisfy needs for which it has no 
satisfaction, this is the true life. The difference be- 
tween living in order to make money, and making 
money in order to live, to live the fullest, most cul- 
tured, most religious life, this is the difference that 
the dullest perception can feel at once between two 
business men. We outgrow our lower occupations 
not as we outgrow plaj'things which we come to cast 
aside altogether, but only as we outgrow our first 
childish slavery to food and come to count it not an 
end in itself, magnifying our appetites, but the mere 
minister and material of thought and action and 
emotion. Thus things fall into their natural orders 
and get their true values for us ; we see their limits, 
we understand their ends, as soon as we look at 
them from a high enough standpoint, as soon as we 
go into the sanctuary of God. 

I seem to see illustrations of this truth everywhere. 
Look at the nations, or at the periods of history, 
which may be said to have been fullest of the con- 
sciousness of a divine rulership. Some ages seem to 
be so worldly, so down to the human level as we look 
back upon them ; others seem to be trembling and 
heaving and rising with the very presence of God. 
In some, men have seemed to feel as if God was very 



120 • THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 

far off from them. In others, all kinds of men, high 
or low, have been haunted in their several ways with 
the certainty that God was very near. Some nations 
and times seem to be wholly of the earth, earthy. 
Others truly have entered into and live in the very 
sanctuary of God, a solemn knowledge of His mercy, 
a solemn fear of His law. Of nations that seem tlius 
full of a special sense of God the Jews stand out in 
old times ; and of ages that have been most aware of 
Him the Puritan times in the history of our own 
English race are the most prominent. And no one, I 
think, studies the liistory of either without feeling 
that there was in them, roughly marked, because 
their character was very imperfect, but yet very real, 
a clearer insight into the relative values of things, 
a juster estimate of what was little and what was 
great, a truer judgment of the necessary limitations 
of wealth, honors, fame, success, than the nations 
and the times around them could claim. This is 
what made the one the most heroic and truthful 
nation of its time, and the other the most heroic and 
truthful period of our English history. 

But men are better illustrations than nations or 
ages, and when we think of men we turn at once to 
the perfect man, and think of Jesus Christ. He 
dwelt with, dwelt in, God continually. He was all 
ways in the sanctuary of His Father, and as we turn 
the pages of His story what a clear sense we have 
that He was always ^'seeing the end of these men.'* 
Can you picture to yourself that Jesus could possibly 
have walked through the richest streets of Caper- 
naum or Jerusalem, and had it for an instant sng- 



THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 121 

gested to His mind that it was a hardship to Him 
that all those low-minded traders should have .been 
so rich and He so poor ? Can you fancy Him look- 
ing into pleasant home-windows as He passed, and 
thinking that His Father had wronged Him because 
He had no home ? Oh what a shielded and protected 
life He always carried ! What false judgment or re- 
pining bitterness could find a weak spot to break in? 
He saw the end of Chorazin and Bethsaida, and it 
was as impossible for Him to envy those foolish cities 
their weak folly as it would be for you, familiar with 
gold and silver, to begrudge your child the chips and 
stones with which he plays at keeping shop ; nay, 
as impossible as it would be for God, with the reali- 
ties of eternity about Him, to want these toys and 
trifles with which we amuse ourself here in this 
world of time. 

Such was the life of Jesus. And Jesus said, '' No 
man cometh unto the Father but by Me." "By 
Him we all have access unto the Father;" and so 
by the power of Christ we may all come near to God 
too, and have from out the open door of His sanctu- 
ary to which we have fled, His view of mortal life 
and all its interests. For us, too, this world's exist- 
ence may subside into its clearly marked circles, and 
we may see as God sees where each circle ends ; see 
how the selfishnesses soon die out ; see how the affec- 
tions sweep out into wider lines ; see how nothing 
but the highest loves reach out into infinity and sent 
life forward into eternity. These times, when we 
are nearest to God, are the times when this world's 
things show their true values to us. Do you not 



122 THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 

know that ? Do you remember how it all looked to 
you when you came home from tlie funeral, not mor- 
bid with hopeless sorrow, but seeming to be above 
the world, and to be standing with the friend who 
had gone, in the presence of the throne of God? Do 
you remember how things changed their relative im- 
portance to you then, how the last were first and the 
first were last, as they shall be on the judgment 
day? Could any one have made you wretched then 
by coming and telling you of a broken bank ? You 
were above complaints and small trials. You had 
entered into the sanctuary of God, and you saw the 
end of these things. 

Some of us who have thought about it must have 
sometimes been puzzled just what to think about 
the great men who are called the Hebrew prophets, 
— Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos. Sometimes they are the 
foretellers of future events ; but sometimes they are 
apparently only the proclaimers of present duty, 
preaching with fearful earnestness and eloquence 
the righteousness of God to an unrighteous people. 
Which was their office? Are they preachers to a 
present or foretellers of a future ? Does not what 
we have said seem to show that the two offices are 
really one ? To see the present deeply enough is to 
see the future. Tell me perfectly what a man is, 
and I will tell you what he will be, such is the fear- 
ful logical continuity that runs through our life. 
These were men full of the spirit of God, in intensest 
sympathy with Him. They abode in His sanctuary, 
and so they saw, as He saw, what Jerusalem and 
Samaria and Babylon were worth. They saw what 



THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 123 

sort of life was in those places and the men who 
ruled them. So they knew how long their life could 
last. They understood the end of tliese men. So 
they were prophets ; and all prophecy that is more 
than mere jugglery must be of this sort. All true 
foresight must be insight first. 

We hear of the men who have the care of the 
Atlantic cable, standing with this end of it when it 
is broken, and'telling just where the interruption is. 
They can tell how long the piece is that they hold in 
their hands ; just in what unseen spot under the sea 
the broken end of it will be found. They say, ''It 
has broken here, or here, or here." And so there are 
some people of acute spiritual perception who can 
accurately tell the worth and promise of the men they 
meet. Can tell by a sense of touch which they can- 
not define themselves, how much real vitality there is 
in them, how long they will last. You come to such 
a person with your latest idol, the new sensation who 
has started your enthusiasm, and you say eagerly, 
" Here, the coming man has come. Here is the first 
bit of the millennium. Here is a man who will have 
long influence, and change the current of things to 
the end." But he takes your idol's life into his 
hands, and feels instantly that it is not what you 
think it. He understands its end. He says sadly, " No, 
this man is bright and energetic, but he is narrow, he 
is selfish, he is false ; his end will be there," placing 
his finger on the limit of the man's selfhood, which is 
the farthest that such a character as his can reach. 
Another sends back its record from a little more dis- 
tant point. Only when he touclies the character of 



124 THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 

a thorougtily unselfish and true soul, given up to 
God, does he feel the thrill of a life that has no end, 
but runs around the whole circle of duty, within and 
parallel to the life of God himself. Such men there 
are. Such tests and judges of their brothers' lives, — 
not arrogant and self-asserting, but humble and meek. 
Such a man's thoughts will not be like our thoughts. 
He will know how to estimate the worth of men's 
lives. He will know whom to help. ' He Avill leave 
a man crying for his lost fortune, and go to a sinner 
who is struggling not to lose his soul, sure that his is 
the deeper need. He will devote himself to a little 
insignificant-looking shoot, that just peeps above the 
ground, and keeps the burning sun off of it carefully, 
leaving the great tall weed by its side to scorch as the 
sun pleases. Men may call him foolish, but wis- 
dom will be justified of this one of her children by 
and by, when the weed has fallen and rotted, and 
the little shoot is grown to the great tree, with the 
fowls of the air among its branches and tired men 
resting under its shade. These are the men who 
keep alive true standards in the world. The men 
who live in the sanctuary of God, and so understand 
the end of these men. 

The great question after all is this : Shall we judge 
man by God or God by man ? Does light and under- 
standing flow upward or downward ? If we judge 
man by God, at once we have these true and discrimi- 
nating thoughts of human life. We have absolute 
standards. We have a test of the worth of all we 
do or see. But if we judge God by man, we only 
have over again what the world has been so full of, — 



THE SANCTUAKY OF GOD. 125 

the persuasions of self-interest, the disbelief in ab- 
solute righteousness, the changing standards of the 
changing times. Men have gone into the sanctuary 
of their own selfishness, the sanctuary of themselves, 
and straightway they have seemed to see an end of 
God. All sense of a supreme and awful Fatherhood 
on which all men depended, to whicli all action must 
go back for judgment, has been lost. No higher 
power than the human has seemed to be moving 
under and giving meaning to the events of ordinary 
life. All spiritual study of the world's course became 
impossible. A low and dreary economy became the 
main-spring of the universe. How much v/e have 
seen of that spirit just now in relation to this fire in 
Boston ! Revolting from the irreverent and repulsive 
spirit of religious competency which undertakes to 
say just why the fire came, just why it destroyed this 
man's buisiness and spared that other's, just what 
God meant to teach men by it, another school has 
been very loud in saying that there was no spiritual 
teaching in it, that it contained no higher lessons than 
those of more careful building and a better govern- 
ment. That it contained those lessons no wise man 
can doubt. God grant that we may heed them ! We 
shall surely suffer if we do not heed them. But if 
there be a God who cares more for His children's 
souls than for their bodies, to whom the body is 
always manifestly temporal and the soul eternal, 
then for soul as well as body there must be a meaning 
in what we still call such a visitation of God as this. 
No man may read his brother's lessons and say, 
" This is what God meant for you ; " but every man 



126 THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 

must read his own, his lessons of patience, spirituality, 
charity, and believe with all his heart tliat God has 
lessons for his brethren too, and pray that in what 
ought to be such a Pentecostal time, his brethren, too, 
may hear God speak His wonderful things, each in his 
own tongue. 

But now let us gather and keep the meanings of 
this verse of Asaph for ourselves. I am sure that we 
need them. I am speaking to men and women who 
are in the midst of the pressing moral problems that 
cannot be escaped. You see wicked men prosperous, 
and you say, "How can I believe in God?" Only, 
my dear friend, only by coming close to God, and 
learning by deep and sweet experience that He has 
better things to give to His beloved than what men 
call prosperity. The peace that passeth understand- 
ing, the calm rest of forgiven sin, and of a soul 
trusted away from itself into its Saviour's hands. To 
one who knows what those high blessings mean, how 
little does it seem that other hands should fill them- 
selves with the shining trifles which its hands are too 
full to hold. Think how it will seem in heaven ! 
Standing before the throne, filled with the unspeak- 
able vision, conscious through all the glory of the 
culture that suffering has brought, hurrying with joy 
on the high missions of the Lord, who will look back 
then and be troubled an instant at the recollection of 
how a wicked man sat at a little richer table, or had 
a little higher seat in the market-place when we were 
here on earth ? 

Ah, but, you say, that is not my trouble. It goes 
deeper than that. It does not merely trouble me 



THE SAXCTUAKY OF GOD. 127 

tliat others have these things. I cannot keep my- 
self from seeking tliem. How shall I overcome the 
temptation that is always driving me to let my reli- 
gion go, and to plunge into this chase after wealth 
and comfort? Again the answer is the same : Enter 
into the sanctuary of God. You cannot" let the lower 
go until the higher first has Avholly filled and occu- 
pied you. Come with your sins, and find the peace 
and bliss of being forgiven. Come with your lonely 
heart, lonely in all its deepest wants, in spite of all 
the tenderest companionships of life, and find the per- 
fect happiness of Christ's communion ; then, filled 
with this new strength, w^hen you turn round and 
say, "Now, let me see if I can fight down my ene- 
mies, can conquer my temptations," behold your 
enemies will be away down there beneath your feet, 
you will have passed out above your temptations, and 
will only see them raghig and tossing impotently, as 
one who stands upon the sunlit peak sees the vain 
fury of the thunderstorm beautiful and not terrible 
below him. 

That cannot come in this life, you say. But I do 
not know. There have been men and women with 
lives so calm and high that they seemed to have 
reached it, even on this tumultuous earth. Hardly 
a fiake of spray from the storm below them ever 
seemed to dash up and wet their steadfast and placid 
feet. But whether it can come in this life or not, 
the struggle for it makes the two lives one. Already 
to him who is working towards it, part of its peace is 
given. The rock runs out under the sea, and your 



128 THE SANCTUARY OF GOD. 

feet may be firm upon it even wliile the waves are 
still breast high. 

Such be the peace in Christ which shall make all 
of our lives strong through all their struggle, until 
at last we enter into that rest which remaineth for 
the people of God. 



vin- 

COME AND SEE. 

** Philip saith unto him, ' Come and See.' " John i. 46. 

Twice in the same chapter these same words, 
"Come and See," are spoken. Once they are the 
reply of Jesus to two of John's disciples, who having 
heard John speak of Him, are following Him, and 
when He turns and sees them ask Him, " Rabbi, 
where dwellest thou ? " Again, they are the words 
of Philip, who having himself become the disciple of 
Jesus, findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, " We 
have found Him of whom Moses in the law and the 
prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of 
Joseph. And Nathanael said. Can there any good 
thing come out of Nazareth? Then Philip saith 
unto him. Come and see." And these words, 
thus twice repeated, are characteristic words of 
Christianity. They have a ring about them that 
belongs to all our religion. " Come and see ! " They 
invite inquiry. They proclaim a religion which is to 
have its own clear tests, which it invites every one to 
use. It is an open faith. It will do nothing in a 
corner. It will be recognizable in its workings by 
men's ordinary perceptions. I need not remind you, 
if you know your Bibles, how common such appeals 
are everywhere. *'Try the spirits whether they be 



130 COME AND SEE. 

of God." " Prove all things." " Go and tell what 
things ye see and hear." '' He that hath ears to hear, 
let him hear." There are institutions that shut their 
doors and windows, and say to the world of ordinary 
men, " You can know nothing of what goes on in 
here. If you come in you must come in blindfold, and 
let yourself be led, and examine nothing. There are 
no tests within your power — you must just be blind 
and obey." Christianity, however she may have been 
misrepresented sometimes, has no such tone as that ; 
but everywhere she throws the doors of her secret 
places, of her most sacred doctrine and her holiest 
character, wide open, and cries to all men as to beings 
who in the healthy use of their human faculties are 
capable of judging, " Come and see." In that call 
she strikes the keynote of intelligent, and so of truly 
devout religion. 

It is the necessity of Christianity thus to appeal 
to the observation of men. She openly declares that 
she seeks certain moral results of which men are able 
to judge. Think how Christ came into the world 
bringing' the mysterious life of a higher world with 
Him ! He told plainly what He came for. It was 
to renew men's spiritual life. It was to make men 
better. It was to save His people from their sins. 
There were profounder and more mystic aspects of 
salvation, subtle and exalted experiences, serene and 
sacred emotions, into which He offered to lead His 
followers, where the ordinary eyes of men Avere not 
prepared to follow them ; but every statement of His 
purpose involved this as preliminary to everything 
beside. That His disciples should first of all become 



CO^IE AND SEE. 131 

different men in those things which other men could 
see and understand, that they shoukl be braver, truer, 
humbler, purer. A pure philosophy or a pure mysti- 
cism, dealing only in abstract thought or feeling, has 
no test for ordinary men. They cannot tell whether 
it is true or false. But a religion which must make 
men's lives different, must change characters, or be a 
failure, has to be always open to men's judgment. It 
has to work its miracles in the light. It has to take 
its man or its generation, and standing out on a plat- 
form where there can be no concealment and no 
jugglery and to say, '' See, I will make this man into 
this different man. I will make this bad man into 
this good man ; " and all the world knows whether 
the experiment succeeds or fails. The test is in the 
hands of every man who knows the difference be- 
tw^een good living and bad living. She cannot fall 
back upon certain unintelligible experiences, certain 
unseen changes which she says have taken place in 
her subject but do not show themselves upon the 
outside. If they do not show themselves on the out- 
side they are unreal. They are such in their very 
nature that if they are real they must show them- 
selves on the outside. If the magician stands before 
me on the stage and points to a lion or a dog and 
says, '' I will change this brute into a man," I have 
the test in my own eyes. It will not do for him to 
say while I see the brute still standing brutishly 
there, " Oh, but the substance is changed too deep 
for you to see, and that the old form remains the 
same is nothing." A changed form must betoken 
the changed substance. I must see the upright figure 



132 COME AND SEE. 

and watch the intelligent eye, and hear the articulate 
voice of manhood, or it is no man — there is no mira- 
cle. So Christianity by its very necessity is compelled 
to be judged of men. 

I should like to speak to-night of some of the gen- 
eral principles of truth-seeking and truth-getting, 
first in themselves, and then in their relation to 
Christianity. It is the subject that is suggested by 
this invitation to observation and experiment, — this 
" Come and see " of the convinced disciple, Philip. 

There are, then, two great methods by which men 
arrive at the knowledge of truth. One is the method 
of authority and the other the method of experience. 
I know what I know either because some one has 
told me of it, or because I have observed it for my- 
self. To say nothing of the comparative trustworthi- 
ness of the two methods, everybody can feel the 
superior vividness of the second. What I see for 
myself is so much more real and vital than what I 
hear from another. The best teacher is always he 
who says, '' Come and see." The brilliant lecturer 
on the laws of light stands at his desk, and in the 
choicest and clearest English describes to me the 
action or the composition of the ray, and I think I 
know all about it ; but suddenly he turns to his in- 
strument and makes me see the ray of light doing 
its action or unfolding into its constituents, and my 
knowledge is of a new sort. The method of authority 
has been changed for the method of experience. We 
are like the Samaritans who said to the woman, 
" Now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we 
have heard Him ourselves." 



COME AND SEE. 133 

There is always this distinction ; but yet remember 
that where truth seems to be received by the method 
of authority, still the method of experience must 
have preceded or else the other could not legitimately 
have been used. Tliere must have been a previous 
conviction of the trustworthiness of the teacher got 
by our experience either of him or of some who have 
told us about him, or else we should have no right 
to believe what he says. So all comes back at last 
to the method of experience. The invitation, "Come 
and see," is the invitation into all truth. When 
Jesus had risen from the dead, jon remember. His 
disciple refused to believe till with his own hand he 
had felt the wounds in the hands and feet and side. 
And Jesus gently rebuking him, compares, as it were, 
the methods of authority and experience, of faith 
and science, so to speak, to the advantage of the 
former when He says, " Thomas, because thou hast 
seen thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have 
not seen and yet have believed." And yet when we 
come to think of it, is not His rebuke really that 
Thomas had not used the method of experience 
enough, not that he demands it too much ? He re- 
bukes liim that in all the j^ears that they had been 
together he had not observed Him deeply enough to 
learn His character and understand His words. Is 
He not pleading, not against science, but for a higher 
science? Must it not be alwaj^s so? Must not all 
truth come to us through the faculties that God has 
given to us, faithfully employed. Jesus always asked 
the people to believe wliat He told them of heaven, 
of the judgment day, of His own mysterious nature, 



134 COME AND SEE. 

in virtue of what they saw, — the sick man made 
well and the poor made rich. '' If I do not the 
works of my Father believe me not," a direct appeal 
to experience. " Come and see, and according to 
what you see believe or disbelieve in the awful 
unsearchable truths of God and the celestial life." 

What follows, then ? Having this method of truth 
we have no right to expect the attainment of truth 
except in the use of this method. We have no right 
to count that as truth which has come to us without 
its use, without some stead}^ application of our facul- 
ties to the matter which is in question. But how 
much people do hold to be true or not true which 
they have reached in no such way. Men are preju- 
diced, we say, and prejudice means simply this : " A 
judging before ; " a forming an opinion before you 
have any grounds for an opinion ; a judgment be- 
fore evidence ; a making up your mind before you 
have come and seen. Do we not recognize our old 
vexatious friends ? A man is unwilling to say of any 
subject that he has no opinion about it because he 
has had no chance to examine it (as any sensible man 
must say of a hundred subjects), and so he makes up 
an opinion without examination, and it is only a 
prejudice that he flaunts in the world's eyes. A man 
would like a certain thing to be true, and so he saj^s 
over and over again, " This is true." He would like 
his house to be just so high; he would like the Bible 
to be verbally inspired ; he would like that there 
should be no future punishment, and so he says over 
and over again, " This is so," and never comes 
squarely and fully up to the facts to see whether it 



COME AND SEE. 135 

is so or not, or if be does meet the facts some day he 
meets them so encased in his armor of prejudice that 
they are powerless to breal^ it. A good man — and 
this is one of the commonest of tilings — thinks that 
in order to keep the world sound and good and liealthy 
such and such a statement ought to b.e true ; thinks 
that tlie world will go to ruin if it is not true, and so 
he says, "It must be true," and there is his prejudice 
full made. He may be right or may be wrong, but 
either way he is prejudiced, and so feeble. He has 
never got up to the facts where strength lies. Indeed, 
I think this last is one of the hardest cases to make 
perfectly clear either to ourselves or others. It is no 
doubt a certain presumption for the truth of an idea 
that the world would be wiser and better if it were 
true. If we could be perfectly sure that the world 
would be wiser and better for it, it would be a very 
strong presumption of its truth ; but, after all, it could 
be no more than a presumption. Finally, we must go 
and see whether it be true; we must face facts, and 
our presumption could only send us with more inter- 
est and earnestness to the facts which alone could 
give US an answer. 

These are some forms of prejudice as concerns our 
estimates of truth. The same is true coucerning also 
our estimate of persons. Indeed, to this last the term 
"prejudice" is perhaps more commonly applied; at 
any rate, it was a case of personal prejudice that 
drew out the invitation of our text. Personal prej- 
udice is the formation of an opinion of a person's 
character before we have the ground for an opinion. 
Here was Nathanael who heard Philip tell of Jesus. 



136 COME AKD SEE. 

All he knew of him was that he came from- the town 
of Nazareth. At once he formed an opmion of Hhn; 
He could not be great or good and come from such a 
place. " Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" 
The answer is wisdom itself : " Come and see the 
man whom you dislike. Get your evidence and then 
make your judgment." I know some one thing about 
a man, some one act that he did when he was a boy, 
perhaps not even that, something about his parents 
or his relatives, something about his birthplace, or 
the school he went to, or his place of business, or his 
business partnerships. Now, it is almost impossible, 
as we are made, that such things should not influence 
us, that they should not give us some first impression 
of what kind of a man we shall find him when we 
come to know him ; but to let such first impressions 
magnify and harden themselves into opinions, to let 
them influence our action, to let them decide us not 
to know the man whom we so rashly judge, this is 
personal prejudice. And yet who of us is not guilty 
of it? Who of us does not know of some man against 
whom he has taken a dislike, whom he would avoid 
or depreciate, or perhaps harm to-morrow if he were 
brought in contact with him, whom yet he must hon- 
estly own that he does not know, that he has no real 
ground for thinking ill of, a man wliose character he 
has never "come to and seen," by any such experi- 
ence of him as can justify him in having any real 
opinion about him whatever? How many men will 
go up to the polls and vote for a President of the 
United States, some on one side, some on the other, 
making believe that they have judgments about the 



COME AND SEE. 137 

men, when they have really nothing but prejudices ? 
They will vote for and against phantoms of their own 
fancy, and not clearly understood characters. Why, 
take away our prejudices about each other, and how 
much do we know of one another's life ? How much 
solid judgment is there that is really full of intelli- 
gent experience ? I think that when we die and go 
together to the world of perfect light, we shall have 
to begin almost all our knowledge of one another en- 
tirely afresh. We shall see that these ill-considered 
fancies that we have about each other are good for 
nothing. They will all be swept away out of the 
clear atmosphere of that celestial life. Our deep af- 
fections, our real loves and hates, we shall keep, our 
trivial fondnesses, our foolish likes and dislikes, will 
go together. We shall find by our side upon the sea 
of glass — if God's mercy bring us there — some saint 
whom an inconsistent habit or a scandalous report 
has made us think that we dislike, and find, as we 
look him through and through with the insight of 
that perfect world, and know him for the first time, 
that we cannot hate, but must completely love, so no- 
ble, true, and pure a soul as his. We shall leave these 
clouds behind, as we get higher up the mountain. 
And tliis freedom from personal prejudice, this really 
sympathetic knowledge of one another, may begin 
here, and will be one of the purest earthly foretastes 
of heaven. 

You see, then, whither we are alwa5^s being tempted 
if we could only hear the invitation. It is to trust- 
worthy knowledge of the facts of life, away from 
phantoms and fancies and our mere imaginations. 



138 COME AND SEE. 

You think that work is disgraceful and degrading, 
and that taste and true culture ripen only in idle 
leisure. " Come and see." . Set yourself to work. 
You know nothing about it. Try it, and see what a 
good life it brings. You think that serious thouglit 
is stupid, that nothing but trifling dissipation is in- 
teresting and exciting. " Come and see." Try it, 
and find that there is an exhilaration about a high 
pursuit of ideas that is as far beyond all mere frivol- 
ity as climbing a mountain peak is better than run- 
ning races in the valley. This appeal to experiment 
and fact is the great hope of mankind. This is the 
very soul of modern science. Philosophers had been 
making theories about what the world ought to be 
and what nature ought to do. " Come and see," said 
Bacon. That was the watchword of the inductive 
philosophy, and to-day the world is full of men just 
patiently seeing Avhat Nature is doing, learning her 
b)^ the humble wisdom of experimental science. And 
in religion, bigotry and superstition are the result of 
men's theorizing and speculating about what God 
ought to be. " Come and see ; come and see what 
God is," cries the reassuring voice of Him who would 
not hide Himself from, but show Himself to. His chil- 
dren, and out of a devout and humble study of His 
words and works, out of a readiness to take whatever 
He shall show it, tliere comes the large, earnest, true 
religion which really elevates and saves the soul. 

So everywhere this invitation rings through the 
world. True, the sight which we send out in answer 
to the invitation must be the large use of all our 
faculties. Not merely the outward e3^e must see, the 



COME AND SEE. 139 

mind must see as well. It is not answering the 
whole invitation unless the whole man goes and sees 
with all his x^owers of vision. The eye sees phenom- 
ena ; the soul sees causes underlying and connecting 
the phenomena. We must not stop merely with 
what the eye sees, and, having written down the 
facts we have discovered, call that the all of science, 
and brand all beyond as superstition. It is not 
superstition, not prejudice, but science still, spiritual 
science, when the mind sees a causal will, out of 
which all phenomena proceed, and the heart feels a 
mighty love beating through all the ordered system. 
It is not well to live and see only from the eyes and 
brain outward. 

To' every man there is a fundamental division of 
this universe that the oldest philosophies have recog- 
nized. It is not conceit, it is the mere law of his 
personality that makes it. He is on one side, and all 
the rest of the universe is on the^ther. I is one di- 
vision. All the rest, all that is not I, is on the other. 
Out of that rest of the universe comes the endless 
call to knowledge. '' Come and see " whispers in 
every wind, seems written in the mystery of every 
sunset and starlight, cries pathetically to him out of 
every strange movement of this human nature that 
his heart hears when to the ear all is still. To every 
man it is as if the rest of the universe were made for 
him to use his faculties npon, to learn, to know, to 
love, to hate, as, stand Avhere he will, the horizon 
forms a circle about every man. To say that we 
know that world, before our faculties have met and 
grappled it, is prejudice and folly. To be at work 



140 COME AND SEE. 

really learning it, in any part of it, however small, is 
noble and makes us noble. That is the everlasting 
and unspeakable superiority of any work in life, 
however small, that is true, over every work in life, 
however great, that is false. 

So far I have been speaking of the dut}^ of the 
learner, but the duty of every teacher becomes 
plain, also, from what we have been saying. And 
every man is a teacher, or wants to be sometimes. 
Every man sometimes knows and believes something 
which he desires to make his neighbor also know 
and believe. How shall he do it? If he is wise 
he will try to take his friend to the same facts 
that enlightened him, and make him see them. He 
Avill not merely try to get assent, but to get convic- 
tion. He will say, " Come and see," if it is possi- 
ble. This was the admirable wisdom of Philip. 
What had converted him was the personal sight of 
Jesus. He had uo other religion but that. He 
meant to follow Him because he had seen Him, and 
was satisfied in seeing Him. He might have gone to 
work to argue with Nathanael a multitude of side 
questions, to show that Nazareth was not such a bad 
place after all ; that Jesus had escaped its contami- 
nation, or that, indeed. He was born in Bethlehem, 
and not in Nazareth at all. Bat he was too wise and 
too eager for that. Jesus Himself was His own evi- 
dence. To get his friend face to face with Jesus — 
to make the guileless Nathanael see with spiritual 
sympathy the spiritual Christ. This was his object. 
This Avas what he did. And oh, if every preacher 
could only do it too ! If, instead of arguing a hun- 



COME AND SEE. 141 

dred half-relevant questions, the apostles who fill our 
pulpits were all crying like this wise, honest apostle 
of Bethsaida, "We have found the Messiah, come 
and see;"' and when men hesitated and objected, 
crying still, " Come and see," merely laboring to 
bring the souls of men into the presence of the per- 
sonal Christ, to make them look upon His face, and 
hear His voice, and feel His heart beating, I am sure 
that our pulpits w^ould change weakness for power, 
and our churches be fall of life. The really strong 
and effective preaching that the world has seen al- 
ways has been just this. Men who had seen Jesus, 
wise or ignorant, strong or weak, crying to their 
brethren to come and see Him, too. 

And so of all teaching. A man insults me if he 
tries to force himself on me merely repeating his 
opinion and expecting me to receive it because it is 
his. But a man honors me if he takes me back to 
the source where he found his truth, and bids me 
drink where he drank. I cannot take another man's 
truth, but he can show me where he got his, and I 
will get my own and thank him. A man trying to 
make you take his opinion just because he has thor- 
oughly adopted it and likes it, is like a man who had 
been cured of his palsy, thinking that therefore he 
can cure yours if he touches you. All that he can 
do, evidently, is to take you to the doctor or give 
you the medicine that cured him. And yet the land 
rings with mere positiveness. On every platform 
men are shouting over and over their loud persua- 
sions, and deafening us into assent. How powerful 
it seems at first ! How powerless it is in the long 



142 COME AND SEE. 

run ! Mere assertion may force assent, but it never 
creates belief. Of all the causes and theories and 
political and social parties that are vociferating in 
our land to-day, it is comfortable to know that none 
will finally establish itself by mere vociferation. All 
must die out in noise, except the one or two that 
shall prove strong enough and wise enough to take 
men calmly by the hand, and lead them down to the 
foundations that they rest on, and say, " Look for 
yourselves," and so finally convince men's minds as 
well as deafen their bewildered ears. 

And now I want to apply what I have been saying 
to Christianity more distinctly. I think it is a ques- 
tion that many Christians are not wholly clear about. 
Are there any clear reasons, capable of statement to 
other people, why we are Christians ? There are 
people who know that they are Christiaris, and always 
mean to be. But does our religion stand frankly be- 
fore the world and say to the doubter, '' Come and 
see ; " and having something really to point to which 
can convince his reason and change his heart? Has 
she got just to stand, with her creed in her hand, say- 
ing, '' Believe this or die," threatening the penalties 
of unbelief ; or can she do what any honest man would 
like to do, — call other men to see what she sees, and 
so believe her belief, not because they will suffer if 
they refuse, but because they cannot help it. I 
believe, indeed, that no man ever loses any truth, 
whether through his own fault or not, without suffer- 
ing for it. It may not be in the way of punishment, 
but he suffers. If every truth gained makes a man 
richer, any truth lost must make him poorer. I be- 



COME AND SEE. 143 

lieve that the fear of such suffeiing for disbelief may 
be rightly used to break up men's sluggishness, and 
compel them to inquire ; but that is a different thing 
from attempting to compel belief by fear. Philip 
may say to Nathanael, "- You will suffer if you do not 
believe in my Messiah; therefore, 'Come and see; ' " 
but he cannot say, " You will suffer if you do not 
believe ; therefore believe without seeing." It is a 
perfectly simple distinction, but one that men are 
alwaj^s forgetting. Fear can induce inquiry, but 
cannot create belief. In a frivolous age, before friv- 
olous minds, one may well stand and portray the ter- 
rible effects of rejecting truth. But when the age is 
serious, and when the minds to which he speaks have 
lost their frivolity and really are in earnest, then he 
must be ready to throw aside his terrors and to lead 
them to the reasons of the faith he thinks they ought 
to hold. Can our faith thus utter her invitation? 
Men almost fancy to-day that she cannot; that she 
must hide herself behind vague terrors. If that were 
so, not merely w^e could not make other men believe, 
but we could not believe ourselves. Let us see wdiat 
the invitation is that Christianity gives to earnest 
men really looking for the truth. 

1. It is the Bible first that she is holding as she 
stands there saj'ing, '' Come and see." The Bible 
as the word of God — as the true story of His deal- 
ings with the world. Christianity holds that out 
and frankly bids men come and examine it for them- 
selves. She cannot escape that, and she does not 
want to. The Bible as a book of history and teach- 
ing, to be examined like other books, first as to its 



144 COME AND SEE. 

truth and authority, then as to its meaning, this 
must always be the first principle of a reasonable 
Christianity. That in the four Gospels we have the 
story told by His own contemporaries and disciples 
of how Jesus the Saviour lived and taught, and died; 
that is the truth which Christianity lays first before 
men's eyes. She calls them to examine for them- 
selves whether the book from which the warrant of 
her life proceeds is genuine and true. Men come to 
it, and by every trial they can make of it, of critical 
study or of spiritual experience, they test this spring 
out of which the whole stream flows. 

2. And then, secondly, Christianity offers to the 
world her historic Christ. Again she says, " Come 
and see." Back in the centuries, yet set so clearly 
in the light of authentic history that all attenjpts to 
melt His life into a cloudy myth have always failed, 
there stands this figure. She claims that this Being 
to whom she points is the power and wisdom of God 
present upon the earth. You hesitate and doubt. 
Then '' Come and see," she says. Put yourself in 
the presence of this Being. See how He lives. He 
is a man surely. In suffering and joy alike, the 
identifying proof-marks of our humanity are all 
here. But ennoble humanity as completely as you 
Vv^ill, and it will not explain this phenomenal charac- 
ter and life. There is a simplicity, a largeness of 
purpose, which is divine. Explain this phenomenon 
of human history, how can you? She says it is 
God manifest in the flesh. Come and find another 
explanation, if you can. Come, and if there is no 



COME AND SEE. 145 

other to be found, take this and own the divine 
Christ. 

3. And thirdly, Christianity calls us to see her 
Christian history. She claims that the Christ, for- 
ever present in human life, is a renewing and com- 
forting and strengthening power everywhere. You 
doubt and hesitate. Again, frank as Philip, she 
cries, " Come and see." Then the great books are 
opened; the birth and growth of modern historj' 
is shown ; the larger reign of conscience ; the 
gradual advance of freedom ; the ever-moving 
spiritual element in life ; the refreshed, invigorated 
world of modern times. Then here and there a 
veil more sacred is lifted from the hearts of single 
men. The record of the saints is shown, — men, 
women, little children, borne up over their sorrows 
so that their voices riuGC still to us out of the fires 
where they burned, — made giants in their weakness, 
to do the work of God so that the hard world still 
bears the pressures where their feeble fingers laid 
hold of it, as if it had been seized with some grasp 
of iron. These are the phenomena. Come and see 
them ! Come and see them ! Other religions can 
show you some of the same sort, no doubt. We 
rejoice to recognize the proof that in them too the 
divine Spirit has been at work. When the faith of 
Christ shows her marks of the divine Power, let 
our voices gladly rejoice to acknowledge the divine 
Presence. 

The Bible, the historic Christ, the Christian history, 
— these, then, are what the religion we believe in lays 
before men who are really willing to come and see 



146 COME AND SEE. 

whether what she claims is true or not. But is this 
all? Is there not another region of evidence from 
which the Christian draws his deepest assurance, but 
which seems less open to him who is looking at the 
faith from its outside. I mean the region of per- 
sonal experience. Christ saj^s to the Christian, " I 
can bless you with spiritual blessings, with a loving, 
happy inner life." ''Yes," the glad soul answers, 
recalling many a bright passage in its own' career. 
*' Yes, surely, Christ can do, will do, has done all that 
He says." And so it gladly looks forward and trusts 
Him for the things to come. But, then, when that 
soul turns to another by its side, and tells of the 
richer life, the trust, the hope, the peace, the courage, 
the gradual purity which the Saviour can give, and 
that stranger soul, weary of a search for these high 
things in which it never has succeeded, looks in- 
credulous and hopeless, can yo^ say to it simply, 
" Come and see," tenipting it to an experience wdiich 
lies wide open to any one, like these others I de- 
scribed? "How can I?" it replies. "To try these 
things implies already a sympathetic appreciation of 
them, which is the very faith I lack and cannot 
find." We stand apart. " I say I cannot believe, and 
your only answer is. Come and believe." This is 
the real difficulty that many people feel when they 
are asked to test the reality to its spiritual power 
by making themselves subjects -of it. Their an- 
swer, often not captious, but very sad, is that they 
cannot make themselves subjects of it until they 
do believe in it. And so the weary circle runs 
around. 



COME AND SEE. 147 

Is it a hopeless difficulty ? Some people seriously 
believe that it is. They hold that the whole Chris- 
tian experience is so foreign and so unintelligible to 
a soul that God has not called, that it is utterly un- 
aj)proachable and unattractive to that soul, and they 
fix the calling of God at one definite recognizable 
point in a man's life. Until that moment comes, it 
is as impossible for that man to make his way into 
the cha,rmed circle in which they live who live with 
God, as for Lucifer to gather up his own shattered 
strength and holiness, and go and stand again beside 
Gabriel and Michael before the throne of God. To 
invite the soul to such an experience is to invite to an 
impossibility — it is calling upon a corpse to live. 
There is nothing for it to do but to lie helpless and 
wait. The father may tell his child of the joy of the 
Christian, but the child cannot rise up and say, '' I 
will go." Friend may cry to friend oat of the full- 
ness of his heart, '' Oh, taste and see that the Lord is 
good ! " but he is tempting only to a Tantalus feast. 
This test of Christianity which lies in the personal 
Christian experience can be nothing to you till first 
you are a Christian. 

I cannot think that this is true. It does not 
sound to me like the New Testament. It does not 
sound to me like Christ. And its fault seems to 
me to be in this assumption, that there is one fixed 
moment in a man's life when the spirit of God comes 
to him for the first time — that before that moment 
he is an outsider, a foreigner, and an alien. If our 
first view is different — if we believe that all men 
are God's children, and that each of the children 



148 COME AND SEE. 

from his birth into this world, and how long before 
we cannot say, is on the Father's heart and mind ; 
if we believe that every truth and goodness that 
the most benighted soul finds comes to him from the 
one only source of truth and goodness which the 
universe contains (and in order not to deny that, 
men have been compelled to deny that much which 
was evidently truth and goodness was either true or 
good) ; if the hour of conversion is the time when 
the soul comes to God, and not the time when God 
comes to the soul, that having happened so long 
before ; if all this different idea be true, then the 
difficulty is not so great. I go to my friend and bid 
him test Christ by this experience of the inner life, 
and he answers me as I .described, " I cannot come 
to Him till first He comes to me." The answer is, " He 
has come to you. All the truth and goodness that 
you have He brought you. Your coming to Him will 
be only coming into a consciousness, and so a com- 
plete service of the Saviour who was already with 
you." When I invite you, then, to the religious ex- 
perience, I invite you not to something strange, but to 
something Avhich in its rudiments you know already. 
You have already seen the opening of the paths that 
lead to Christ. You cannot see the depths they lead 
to, but they do lead finally to Him. When I urge 
you to come to Him, I am urging you to follow those 
paths out to the end. You cannot see their whole 
course, but 3^ou can see one step at least farther than 
you have done yet, and so test the steps beyond, so 
come nearer to the illumination and assurance that 
awaits you at the end. 



COME AND SEE. 149 

I am sure that this is true : that when I take 
a man who says that he knows nothing of Christ, 
and yet who owns that he has instincts of duty 
and aspirations of reverence to God, and a long- 
ing for purity, that I believe were put into his heart 
by no other than Christ's Holy Spirit, and when I 
urge and beg that man to do the duty and to be- 
lieve the truth which he has had made known to 
him, I am leading toward that Christ who is the cen- 
tre of all duty and all truth. If I found a man who 
believed in a God, but not in any self-manifestation 
of that God in human life, what would I do ? I 
would do all that I could to make that God whom he 
did believe in more and more real to him. I would 
waken his conscience till it cried out with the sense 
of disobedience. He should see that God awful in 
His righteousness, more awful in His love, close to 
his daily life. Nev/ needs should start out of his deep- 
ening religion, until only an Emmanuel, a fatherhood 
made manifest in brotherhood, a God in Christ, could 
satisfy him. So I would try to get him to "come and 
see " Christ, where He is most mighty, — in His work 
in the soul of man. Only when I found a man who 
owned no duty which was yet undone, before whom 
there opened no vista of spiritual aspiration that was 
yet unfoUowed, — only when I found the man per- 
fectly bounded and contented with this earthly life, 
should I feel that I had found one before whom there 
opened no way to the Saviour of us all. 

. This seems to be reasonable, surely. If you knew 
that the benefactor of your life was living now in 
Europe, though you did not know just where or how 



150 COME AND SEE. 

to reach him, or what he would do for you, or even 
thoroughly and certainly who he was and what he 
was, only that he was and that he was there, you 
would go to Europe and live there yourself, if you 
had anj' way of getting there, that you might be in 
the same land with him and certainly somewhere 
near him. . If a soul has many doubts and bewilder- 
ments about Christ, and yet knows that there is a 
Saviour, and that that Saviour's home is in the land 
of righteousness and truth, then to that land of 
righteousness and truth that soul will go by any road 
that it can find, eager to get there, seeking a road, 
pressing through difficulties, that it may be in the 
same country with, and somewhere near, its unfound 
Lord. It may be that the clouds that for us mortals 
haunt that land of righteousness and truth may long 
hang so thick and low that living close to Him the 
soul may still fail to see Him, but some day certainly 
the fog shall rise, the cloud shall scatter, and in the 
perfect enlightenment of the other life the soul shall 
see its Lord, and be thankful for every darkest step 
that it took towards Him here. 

And is this what it means, then, that " Coming to 
Jesus " ? That phrase that is so old, so vague, what- 
ever it means, means for you, first of all, just this 
doing the duty which lies next to you, and following 
out whatever spiritual conviction you have to its 
next result, being true to the light you have, and 
waiting, hoping, praying for more. Yes, simply, just 
exactly that. If you have any duty that you know 
you ought to do, and are cowardly and dishonest 
about and will not do it, then to go and do it, if 



COME AND SEE. 151 

you have any spiritual aspiration that you are keep- 
in q: dowji under a weig^ht of business and selfishness, 
then to set it free, that is what it means for you 
now to come to Christ. It may be that Nathanael's 
first step when he started with Philip was into the 
dark shadow of some Capernaum alley or up the 
steep rocky path that led from town to town. After- 
ward Christ clothed in light upon the lake at mid- 
night, Christ at the table in the chamber of the 
supper, Christ in the room where the disciples were 
assembled after the resurrection when the door was 
shut. And so for you hereafter, Christ in the high- 
est experiences, the purest raptures of this life and 
the other, Christ in forgiveness, in communion, in 
fellowship of work, in fellowship of glory ; but now 
Christ in these first steps that lead you towards Him, 
in the truthfulness and purity and unselfishness and 
humility, in the struggle to do right, and the sorrow 
when you have done wrong, which are possible for 
you right away. 

I am well pleased that our long journey of this 
evening has brought us out at last upon this clear 
and open ground of immediate duty, — the duty for 
to-morrow, the duty for to-day. You are in doubt of 
Christ. '' How can He be this that you claim ? Hoav 
can He be, indeed, at all? " The answer is, "' Come 
and see." You say, '^ I cannot." Say it sadly or 
bitterly, ''I cannot." I do not know what your im- 
possibility may be, but I am sure of one absolute 
impossibility that may be yours. You cannot see the 
highest and the best so long as you are neglecting a 
known duty or stifling a known truth. I am well 



152 COME AND SEE. 

pleased to leave it here. Go home and search your 
heart. Let it speak out. Be brave and honest. Take 
up your wronged duties and do them. Take up your 
wronged truths and really believe them. Enter into 
that region of sincerity and faithfulness where Christ 
abides, and then surely some day you will find Him 
there. Then not merely the lowest but the highest 
evidences of our faith shall become clear to you, even 
that highest of all its evidences, the Spirit itself 
bearing with your spirit that you are the cliild of 
God and joint heir with Christ. 



IX. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CRUST. 

" Let no man deceive himself. If any man thinketh that he is 
wise among you in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be 
wise." — I. Cor. iii. 18. 

There must have been plenty of people in Cor- 
inth to whom these words came home. The conceit 
of Greece was wisdom, and Corinth was one of the 
ej^es of Greece. There were the scholars of the 
schools. There, in that bright transparent air, every- 
thing quivering and blazing in the sunshine, the 
passion of knowing was the great dominant emotion ; 
the pride of knowing was the complacent satisfaction 
of men's lives. 

And there is no satisfaction so subtle and insidi- 
ous as the conceit of knowledge — no other posses- 
sion so becomes a very part of the possessor. The 
money which you hold in your hand, the laurel 
which men wreathe around your brow, both of these 
may disappear and you are still the same, but the 
thing you know is part of you. No man can take it 
from you. Its subtle essence is in your heart and 
character. You are something different because of 
it. And so, as a man loves what he is more than 
what he has, self-love lends all its intensity to the 
pride of learning, and no man is so proud as he who 
" thinketh that he is wise " among men in the world. 



154 THE PEINCIPLE OF THE CRUST. 

To such men writes St. Paul. St. Paul, himself 
the wise man, the lover of wisdom, and he says that 
there come times when the great need of life is to 
put aside what seems our wisdom, to give it no value, 
to make no account of it, to seem to ourselves to 
know nothing, and in his strong words, to ^'become 
a fool," and this with the distinct purpose that we 
may really get the wisdom which we have thought 
ourselves to possess. Surely there is enough of 
strangeness in such exhortation to excite our curi- 
osity, and set us to studying to see what the great 
apostle, wlio always means something weighty and 
timely and interesting, means here. 

And at the very outset we cannot help feeling how 
his words have the same tone with which a good 
many other words in the New Testament, and es- 
pecially in the Gospels, make us familiar. We think 
about those words of Jesus when He said, " Whoso- 
ever loseth his life shall save it; " or those other 
Avords to the young rich man, " Go and sell all that 
thou hast ; " or yet those others, " Except ye be con- 
verted and become as little children." And of a gen- 
eral spirit which runs through all His teaching, that 
very much which the world has been elaborately 
building up must be pulled down, before the true 
city of God, the new Jerusalem, can be established 
in the earth. No one can read the New Testament 
and not catch that spirit, and whoever catches it, 
sees the far-off hope of a perfected humanity only 
through falling systems and the ruin of the vicious 
and imperfect conditions which must take place first. 
Whoever has thoroughly accepted and been, filled 



THE PKINCIPLE OF THE CRUST. 165 

with that spirit, is ready to feel how like it is to what 
Paul teaches in this text, and that the man who 
calls himself wise must become a fool to gain true 
wisdom. 

It is no mere abuse of earthly wisdom, such as 
religious teachers sometimes have allowed themselves. 
It goes more deep. It comes more down to funda- 
mental principles than that. Let me try to state the 
principle which seems to me to be involved in it* 
If I gave it a name I should almost venture to call 
it the Principle of the Crust. What I mean is 
this: There are two sorts of hindrance or obstacle 
which may settle around any object and prevent a 
power from outside from reaching it. One of them 
is a purely external obstacle, built round it like a 
wall, of stuff and nature different from the object 
itself. The other is simply its own substance, hard- 
ened upon the surface and shutting up the body of the 
object, as it were, behind and within itself. This 
latter is the Crust. The river freezes, and it is the 
river's self, grown hard and stiff, which shuts the 
river's water out from the sunshine and the rain. 
The ground is trodden hard, and it is the very sub- 
stance of the ground that lies rigid and impenetrable 
and catches the seed, and will not let it enter in and 
claim the soil and do its fruitful work. The loaf 
hardens its surface, and the Crust which confines the 
bread is bread itself. This is the notion of the Crust. 
It is of the very substance of the thing which it im- 
prisons. It is not a foreign material ; but the thing 
itself, grown hard and rigid, shuts the soft and tender 
and receptive portions of the thing away. The in- 



156 THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CRUST. 

fluences from outside are powerless to reach it. Not 
until the Crust is broken, and the ice melts once 
more into the stream, and the hardened ground is 
crumbled into the general system of the soil again. 
Not until then can power and influence easily find 
their way in and permeate the Avhole. 

Is not the parable plain ? Can we not recognize 
how that which takes place in the lake or on the 
road-side takes place also in the ordinar}^ intellectual 
and moral life of man. Out of the very substance 
of a man's life, out of the very stuff of what he is 
and does, comes the hindrance which binds itself 
about his being, and will not let the better influences 
out. His occupations, his acquirements, his habits, 
his standards of action and of thoughts, make Crusts 
out of their own material, so that, beside whatever 
foreign barrier may stand between them and the 
higher food they need, there is this barrier which 
they have made out of themselves. That self-made 
barrier must be broken up^ must be restored to its 
first condition and become again part of the sub- 
stance out of which it was evolved, before the life can 
be fed with the dews of first principles and the rain 
of the immediate descent of God. 

Let us see what all this means in special illus- 
trations. What is it that we mean by Prejudice? 
Simply the premature hardening of opinion. A man 
is thinking and studying, seeking after truth. He 
is open to all light and influence. He is ready to 
be taught on every side. Knowledge is welcome 
whencesoever it may come. The surface of his life is 
free. But suddenly or gradually the man stops. 



THE PEIXCrPLE OF THE CliCJST. 157 

As if a cold wind touched the stream and froze it, 
the water turns itself into a wall of ice. The degree 
of thought and truth which has been reached be- 
comes a stopping-place. It is no longer a promise 
and prophecy of more beyond. It is an end — hard, 
stiff, impenetrable, nothing can break through it. 
What is it but a Crust? It is itself made of the 
thought which it imprisons. It is the toughened 
surface of the student's study, making it impossible 
for any further light to enter in and play upon the 
thought imprisoned in itself. 

This is the essence of all prejudice : my tyrant 
says to me, " You shall not learn," and shuts me up 
behind a wall of brass or iron. My own nature says 
to me, "You shall not learn," and throws out its ar- 
mor of prejudice, made of its own crude conceptions 
and half-mastered learning, and within that I am as 
helpless as behind the iron or the brass. Those crude 
conceptions must be broken up and turned again 
into good truth-learning capability before I can once 
more lie open to the light. 

Another kind of crust is formalism. Truth utters 
itself in outward symbols. Belief and resolution 
declare themselves in forms. It is the natural law of 
expression, and so long as the form remains soft and 
pliant, full of the spirit of the belief or resolution it 
expresses, all is right. Form and belief are like 
body and soul to one another. But when form 
hardens into formalism, when the real substance of 
belief, instead of remaining soft and pliant, grows 
stiff, and will not let belief grow and enlarge, will 
not let the food of belief which is new truth come 



158 THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CBUST. 

pouring in, then jou have got the most crusted and 
impenetrable armor that can be imagined. Forms 
ought to be the medium through which truth comes 
to the inner nature, as the surface ground furnishes 
the channels through which the warm sunshine 
reaches the deeper soil. When forms do not do that, 
but shut truth out, and make the inner nature starve 
on the stale remnant of what it already has, keeping 
no free and open communication with the perpetual 
source, then forms have hardened into formalism. 
Beware of formalism, — not by discarding forms, but 
by keeping them soft, by refusing to let them grow 
hard ; and that can only be by keeping them in true 
connection with the faiths which they express. 
When they cease to express faith, break them up, 
return them to the ground again, and ask God to 
feed you directly with the ministrations of His 
truth. 

What is a great reformation, a great fresh start 
and new departure in the world's religion, but just 
the breaking up of a formalism which has become a 
crust ? The ways of the church have grown hard. 
They are imprisoning, instead of cultivating or 
expressing, the church's life. A great explosion 
comes. The traditions and habits are all broken to 
pieces. The fragments of the crust are swallowed 
up and stirred in, and become again part of the 
mass of true faith and healthy feeling, which lies 
once more open without hindrance to the sunlight 
of God. That is what took place in Luther's day. 
That is what, in many ways, is taking place in 
ours. 



thp: p^.I^x^TPLE of the crust. 159 

Another sort of crust is the conceit of knowing 
the workl. Have jo\i not all known men who, 
sooner or later, came to the conclusion that they 
knew mankind ? They found some stiff, tight, 
narrow conception of what human life amounted 
to. It was sceptical of any good. It was cynical 
and bitter. It disparaged the good in man which it 
could not deny. It Avas largely the echo of the 
man's own selfhood ; the image of his own nature, 
accepted as the type and picture of universal hu- 
manity. However it was formed, there it stood, this 
man's knowledge of man. And he was very proud 
of it. He thought it was a miracle of insight. It 
stood to him as the result of wonderful observation. 
He went about the world readino* his fellow-creatures 

o 

by this key which he applied indiscriminately and 
stupidly to them all. And what was .the result? 
Was that man ready or able to see and own a new, 
fresh, singular specimen of manhood when it ap- 
peared? Could the mystery of human life, its 
pathos, its wonderful variety, its suggestion of un- 
developed power, get any chance of^ play npon his 
imprisoned perception? Surely, not. There is no 
blinder bat in all the heavens than this conceited 
man of the world who goes about saying, " Oh, I 
know man!" and is perfectly incapable of forming 
just judgments, or seeing the finest shades and dis- 
tinctions of men and women. His crust must be 
broken up. His crude conceit must be dispelled. 
Some experience must teach him how much richer 
is the nature of man, how much harder to know than 
he has guessed. Then, perhaps, when he had ceased 



160 THE PKINCIPLE OF THE CRUST. 

saying, "You can't teacli m3 anything," he may 
begin to learn. 

Out of all these instances does there not issue to 
our sight a truth or principle which we recognize at 
once? It is that all life tends to encrust itself, to 
imprison itself within itself, and that its crust needs 
to be constantly broken and returned into the gen- 
eral mass out of which it was formed, in order that 
the best infiaences may be received. Ever there 
must be a return to a primitive simplicity, to a con- 
dition of first principles, in which the power to 
receive may be freshened and renewed. Do you 
not recognize that? It is part of the old craving to 
begin the game of life again. It is not that life has 
been miserable, or has wholly failed, but it has lost 
simplicity. We long for that openness in which all 
things seem possible. A greater and greater num- 
ber of things seem to have become impossible* "I 
shall never do this ; I shall never do that," we have 
come to say of one thing after another, till the things 
which there is anj^ chance of our doing seem to have 
become very few indeed. Then youth, with its un- 
limited possibilities, seems bright to you, as it never 
did when you possessed it. You cry out hopelesslj^ 
for its return : 

*' Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife, 
"When I heard my days before me and the tumult of my life." 

The same is felt about some special department of 
life, or some special kind of knowledge. Have not 
you men in your professions often thought whether 
you would not gladly give up all the knowledge and 



THE PllTNClPI.E OF THE CRUST. 161 

experieDce which you have gained, precious as you 
know it is, if only you could get again the freshness 
and eagerness and enthusiasm, the sense of how much 
thfere was to know, and of what a capacity there was 
in you for knowing it, which filled the first years of 
3^our life in your vocation ? Have not you readers of 
the Bible son^ times wished that you could rise up 
some morning and find your Bible a new book, fresh 
and strange toyou as if you had never seen it before ? 
Have you not almost envied the heathen to whom 
the story of Jesus came unstaled by countless repe- 
titions, with no hardness on its surface from the 
thoughts and theories which have pressed and 
handled it for all these thousand years ? 

Oh that I could go back and know nothing, with 
my power of knowing and my eagerness to know, 
set free from under the weight of helpless knowledge 
and unused experience which are pressing on them 
now ! 

And, now, do j^ou not see ? Is not that craving 
for a return to simplicity just what St. Paill has in 
his mind when he says of the man whom he wants 
to see made wise, "• Let him become a fool." Is it 
not just this getting rid of the crust of life, in order 
tliat life itself may be open to the sunshine. This is 
what he means by his strange word " fool," I think. 
It may have some reference to what the w^orld will 
think of him who accepts the Gospel in its simpleness ; 
but more than that, I think it also must refer to that 
condition of simplicity to which the nature must re- 
turn before Christ with all His great enlightenment 
can take possession of it. 



162 THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CRUST. 

There is an illustration and anticipation of tliis 
power of Christ to simplify the nature and break 
through its crusts, in the way in Avhich all great 
experiences tend to do the same thing, which Paul 
says that Christ can do. Do you not know what I 
mean when I say, that under all strong emotions, 
and at all critical instants, men who have seemed to 
be wise among other men in the worlds very often 
"become fools that they may be wise?" Look at 
your accomplished man — which means your finished 
man. The man who has got every problem solved 
and every question answered ; the ends of life all 
gathered up and folded in ; the surfaces all smooth 
and hard and shining; everything neat and snug, 
and trim and wise. Suppose some great calamity 
comes upon him — some one of those terrible things 
which tear life up from the bottom and leave no 
stone or timber standing where it stood. What is 
the result? How the old settled questions burst to 
life again, and will not stay imprisoned under what 
seemed -their sufficient answers. The adjustments 
are thrown all out of gear. The ends are all torn 
loose and sent flying out upon the wind. He who 
seemed to himself to know everything^ seems to him- 
self now to know nothing. The wise man has become 
a fool. 

A great joy sometimes has the same result. I 
become happy beyond my highest dream of happi- 
ness, and what then? Again my theories of life 
give way. They will not hold this overwhelming 
pleasure. The sails are torn to tatters with this 
tempest of joy. I dare not try to account for it. 



THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CRUST. 163 

I take it in a dazzled ignorance. It is in a fool's 
hands that this new preciousness of life is tremu- 
lously held. 

And yet in both these cases this foolishness of a 
great experience is only preliminary to and makes 
possible a higher wisdom. Into this heart, all torn 
and dismayed with sorrow, pours a new sense of the 
greatness of life and life's relationships. Into this 
soul, all turbulent with joy, there comes a knowledge 
of goodness and responsibility, that was impossible 
before the great disturbance came. You needed 
larger theories, more profound and spiritual thoughts 
of things, than those which you had lost. You must 
have them. And lo ! they came to you! Lo there 
they were ; filling the depth which had been broken 
up. Was it not just the story which Paul tells? 
You had seemed to be wise. You became a fool. 
And then you were really wise. 

And yet, to come back to our crust philosophy 
ao^ain. That which had shut the hig^her wisdom out 
of your soul was part and portion of the soul itself, 
and so when it w^as broken up and kneaded in, it 
became part of the substance which received the new 
illumination. Do you see what I mean? Your ex- 
perience proved insufficient. Your life had. to open 
itself again in primal simplicity to God. But the 
life, which opened itself, had the experience in it as 
an element, and through the presence of that ex- 
perience in it, it was more fit to welcome the new 
wisdom. The new simplicity w^as not the old. 
It was a richer, a completer, a diviner simplicity. 
It was the man's simplicity, and not the child's. 



1G4 THE PKIXCIPLE OF THP: CRUST. 

It harmonized all the results of experience within 
itself. Your learning Avas not able to account for 
and to satisfy your life; but when the conceit of 
learning had been all destroyed, and the real power 
of knowing thrown open to the highest truth, then 
the discipline of the old thought and study made 
that power of knowing a richer thing, more able to 
receive its higher gift of truth. Nothing is lost. 
Conceit paralyzes even the highest attainments by 
making them inhuman. But humility humanizes 
them again and causes them to be receptive. It is 
the story which Tennyson has told so wonderfully in 
his great poem, " The Palace of Art." The spirit 
driven out from the home which its selfishness and 
vanity have built, then daring to hope that when it 
shall itself have grown larger and truer and better 
it may come back and find its palace grown large to 
receive it. 

" Yet tear not down my palace towers, that are 
So lightly, beautifully built; 
Perchance I may return with others there 
When I have purged my guilt." 

It is the wise man going out from his wisdom into 
foolishness, but yet believing that he shall some day 
come back and occupy the old wisdom in a nobler 
spirit. 

Thus I have spoken of the power of a great experi- 
ence to turn the wise man into the fool for whom the 
higher wisdom becomes possible. But now, to come to 
St. Paul's teaching, the greatest of all experiences is 
the access of a great mastery. Nothing means so mucli 



THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CKUST. 165 

to a life as to be taken into the power of another 
life, and lovingly and sympathetically and firmly 
ruled by it. And beyond all comparisons, the great- 
est of all such masteries is Christ's. That which is 
true, then, of the effect of all great experiences, is 
truest of all about the mastery of the soul by 
Christ, of the ben^inning" of the Christian life. In- 
deed Christ and His mastery of the soul seem in 
some strange way to have in themselves the power 
of all great experiences. To become Christ's servant 
does for us that which all great emotions and occur- 
rences of very different characters can do. It sobers 
us like sorrow. It exalts us like joy. It calms us 
like satisfaction. It quickens us like suspense. It 
deepens us like doubt. It irradiates us like cer- 
tainty. It warms us like friendship. It disciplines 
us like authority. It restrains us like fear. It in- 
spires us like hope. It touches us with all the hands 
of all the influences which our nature can receive. 

If this is true, then it is not strange that the power 
which, we saw, belonged to all great experiences should 
also belong supremely to the mastery of the soul by 
Christ. A man transfers the whole thoug:ht of life 
to Christ. That great, that mighty alteration comes. 
The man is born again. New principles, new stand- 
ards occupy him. The life which he now lives in 
the flesh he lives by the faith of the Son of God. 
There never was a nobler instance of it all than St. 
Paul who wrote those words. And in the man's 
doing of that, all the selfish and self-satisfied con- 
ceptions of life go to pieces. The plans which the 
man has made and elaborated and provided with the 



166 THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CRUST. 

means for their execution no longer seem to be 
worthy or sufficient ambitions of a human soul. 
The higher, holier, manlier ambitions of glorifying 
God and helping brother-man possess the life. The 
purposes of life grow personal. They lose their 
definiteness and trimness. " What are you living 
for?" you ask the new Christian with his glowing 
face. "Is it to get rich?" — "Oh, no!" — "Is 
it to enjoy yourself ? " — " Oh, no ! " — " Is it to make 
men praise you and get fame ? " — " Oh, no." — " Is 
it to heap up learning ? " — ^' No." — " What, then ? " 
" It is to follow Christ and do His will and grow like 
Him by obedience." What a bewilderment that 
answer brings ! How he who asked the question can- 
not understand it ! Has the man then " become a 
fool " ? Yes ; in the higher sense, surely he has. He 
has found all the ordinary standards of life insuffi- 
cient, and cast them away. He has gone back to the 
elements of things. He has thought of himself 
once more, not as the millionaire, not as the scholar, 
not as the politician, but as the man — Mcodemus, 
Matthew, Pilate, Paul, these are the men in the New 
Testament whom Jesus thus dissolved out of their 
artificialnesses, and brought down to their essential 
manhood. Wonderful was His power, then ! AVon- 
derful is the power, now and always, with which He 
says to everybody with whom He comes face to face, 
" If any man thinketh that he is wise let him become 
a fool." 

And why ? For what ? If this were all it would 
be most bewildering. Sometimes it has been made to 
seem as if it were all. Sometimes pious men have 



THE PHINCIPLE OF THE CRUST. 167 

talked as if the breaking up of worldly wisdom were 
everything, as if a sort of celestial folly, a sanctified 
babyhood, were the consummate achievement of our 
Christianity. Not so talks Paul : '' Your wise man 
must become a fool," he says ; but why ? " That he 
may become wise." Behold wisdom is the end of 
all ! No less in the Bible and in the church than in 
the schools. It would be indeed a dreadful world 
in which that was not so. A dreadful world 
in which ignorance and foolishness should be the 
conditions of the most approved and rewarded life. 
The end of all is wisdom. If the Gos2:)el discredits 
any of man's achievements, declaring them to be 
incompetent to satisfy the soul and educate the 
nature, it is always only that it may insist upon a 
higher knowledge. Christ was a teacher. Christ is 
a teacher forever. If He declares, as He certainly 
does, that no scholastic culture, and no skill in the 
arts of life, and no acquaintance with the ways of 
men, can save a soul, it is only that He may insist 
upon another knowledge, only that He may insist 
that man must know his own soul, and the deep 
difference of right and wrong, and the infinite holi- 
ness of God. These are true knowledges. " That 
they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus 
Christ whom Thou hast sent." It is of all impor- 
tance that we should know that the Christian life is a 
life of knowledge, not of ignorance. It is a separate, 
a higher region of knowledge than that to which we 
generally give the name ; but it is knowledge still. 
It is the apprehension of truths, of those vast truths 
which the senses cannot discover nor the intellect 



168 THE PKINCIPLE OF THE CRUST. 

evolve, but which through the open avenues of the 
spirit enter in and occupy the life. Who can tell 
what knowledge of the earth, and of the history of 
man, and of the things the Rabbis taught in their 
solemn school, was in the mind of Jesus Christ, and 
yet who doubts His wisdom, who dares to call Him 
ignorant or foolish? In every age and every land, 
except the lightest and most superficial, this higher 
wisdom has been recognized and treasured. To the 
purest and most exalted souls it has seemed to be the 
one precious thing on earth ; all other kinds of knowl- 
edge have seemed to be easy sacrifices, if by their loss 
it could be won. Let us beware that we do not de- 
spise this spiritual wisdom, which is the ultimate treas- 
ure of the human soul. 

And yet I must not seem to talk as if this spiritual 
wisdom involved the final and perpetual sacrifice of 
all the other attainments of man. I must once more 
return to the Parable of the Crusted ground. You 
break up the hard hindering surface, and, as I pointed 
out, it becomes part of the soil on which the sunshine 
and the rain descend and out of which the flowers 
grow. So you break up the crusted conceit of human 
wisdom, and its fragments make part of the simplified 
and softened human nature into which pours the 
higher wisdom of the grace of God. 

What is the crust upon your life, my friend, that 
keeps out holy influence ? Is it the knowledge you 
have gained from books? Is it the multiplied com- 
plexity of your affairs? Is it the busyness of every 
day? Is it your complicated relations Avith your 
friend? Is it the richness of physical life satisfied 



THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CRUST. 169 

with its abundance, health rejoicing in itself? It may 
be any one of these. What shall you pray to God 
for ? Oh, pray to Him to break this crusted hindrance 
all to pieces. It need not be that the possession itself 
should be taken away. What you w^ant to lose is the 
conceit in the possession. You want to learn that it 
cannot satisfy you. Then, when you have learnt 
that, the real satisfaction, the only real satisfaction, 
can come in. And then, when they have been put in 
their true place, these things, knowledge and wealth 
and health and the complexity of life, which once 
hindered the divine wisdom, may become the means 
by which it takes possession of and spreads itself 
through the life. This is the dream we dare to dream 
for ourselves and for our brethren. Now, it is j^our 
learning, your busyness, your physical health which 
keeps you from, which keeps from you, the inflow, 
the influence of God. Sometime it shall be through 
those very possessions — learning, busyness, physical 
strength, — broken out of their conceit and made 
capable by humble consecration of their true min- 
istry, that God shall come to you. 

What shall bring about so great a change ? Noth- 
ing can do it but the overwhelming love of God 
taking possession of your soul and making you feel 
through and through that to know Him is the one 
only satisfactory attainment of a human life. Reach 
that, and, whatever else you miss, your life is rich. 
Lose that, and, whatever else you gain, your life is 
poor. Reach that, and then gain everything else you 
can, and your master, knowledge. Your knowledge 
of God shall dominate it all. Oh, be all the man tha^ 



170 THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CRUST. 

it is in you to be, only at the heart of all be God's 
man, and then it will be safe and good for you to be 
all the rest. 

Such men may all of us be by the power of Christ. 
Give yourself to Him simply, totally, and then live 
as fully as you can, letting Him claim all your life 
and fill it with Himself. 



X. 

THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 

*'In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a 
place for you : and I will come again and receive you unto myself." 
— John xiv. 2. 

The disciples of Jesus must often have felt a 
strange uneasiness while they were with Him. Close 
as He drew them to Him, well as they came to know 
Him, there must have always been a sense of how 
much greater He was than they were, and so a fear 
lest sometime He should leave them. Have we not 
all felt something of this sort when we have had a 
friend who was far nobler and larger than ourselves? 
We lived in closest intimacy with him; our power 
w^orked at the same tasks, but all the while we felt 
that there were other powers in him which we could 
not match. Sometime he certainly must outgo our 
sphere, begin to do wider tasks, enter fields where we 
could not follow him. Sometime, at least, when he put 
forth the wings of his immortality, and entered on the 
other life, our friend must leave us, completing himself 
in regions far beyond our powers. Such a feeling 
had added keenness and pathos to many a friendship. 
And we can see traces of it every now and then in 
the intercourse of Christ and His disciples. They 
cling to Him as to one whom they are afraid to lose. 
Whenever He foretells a separation from them, they 



172 THE LEADEKSHIP OF CHRIST. 

receive it as if it fell in with some misgiving of their 
own. Every sensitive reader of the Gospels must 
have felt, it seems to me, that sort of fearfulness in 
all the love, and anxiety in the midst of satisfaction, 
in the companionship of Jesus and the twelve, which 
ohowed how they felt that they must some day lose 
Him, that there was something in Him which must 
complete and manifest itself outside of their sphere. 
''Whither I go, thither ye cannot come." When 
Jesus said those words, they were terrible to His 
disciples, just because thej^ confirmed the unspoken 
fear which was lurking in their hearts before. 

We must bear all this in mind, I think, or else we 
cannot wholly understand the feeling of our text. 
I want to speak to you this morning from these 
words of Jesus, which seem to me to tell the story 
of all His life with His disciples, and so indeed of all 
His life with those whom His disciples represented, 
— the Christendom and Christian souls that were to 
come. They are words which have in them the 
whole of Christianity. Think, then, of these disciples 
wondering whether they could keep Jesus, fearing 
that He must leave them, fearing that the time 
would come when His life would outgo theirs and go 
to regions of activity whither they could not follow 
it. To them, fearing thus, Jesus answers, " No. 
Let not your heart be troubled. I am going, indeed, 
but I am going for you, not away from you. I go to 
prepare a place for you. In my father's house to 
which I go are many mansions, and if I go and pre- 
pare a place for you, I will come again and receive 
you unto myself." See what He says : '' There is a 



THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 173 

region where we both belong. You as much as I. 
I am going forward to enter there so that your en- 
trance may be the easier. I am going to open the 
door, and then am coming back to take you into m}^ 
power again and carry you on with mj^self, and the end 
shall be that we shall be together there." Now, for- 
get that when Jesus said that He was just upon the 
point of leaving this Avorld. Forget for the moment 
(we will come back to that before we close) that the 
first application of the words was to the transfer of 
Christ's life, and His disciples' life, from earth to 
heaven. Think of it as if it were a saying that be- 
longed wholly to this world, and have we not in this 
utterance of Jesus an account, clear and intelligible, 
of the way in which He always led His disciples from 
one stage of life into a higher. This is no illegitimate 
use of tlie w^ords. Christ could not lead His followers 
from earth to heaven except by the same means by 
which He had already led them from one spiritual 
stage of earth into another. We have, then, a clear 
and definite plan laid down. He says, when I would 
lead you forward I go forward first myself. I estab- 
lish for myself a place in tiie new region where 1 
want you to be. You and I belong together, so that 
establishing for myself a place there I really set up 
your right to be there too. Then I come back to 
you, and by the love that is between us I draw jou 
on into the realm that I have opened. That is the 
way I bring the souls that belong to me from strength 
to strength, until before the God of gods appeareth 
every one of them in Zion. 

I remember how once travelling in Syria the guide 



174 THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 

upon whom we wholly depended disappeared. By 
and by he came back to us as Ave rode along and told 
us where he had been ; that in the village which we 
were approaching and where we were to spend the 
night his family lived. That he had ridden on to see 
that they were ready to receive him and to prepare 
quarters in their house for us, the travellers under his 
charge, and now came back to conduct us thither, 
and by and by he had brought us where he belonged, 
and where through him provision had been made and 
a welcome was waiting for us. 

Let us look, then, at this plan of Christ's culture. 
It is really the same by which any man leads another 
who believes in him on to loftier and loftier things. 
I spoke about the friend who seems to be perfectly 
one with you, yet whom you are always lurkingly 
afraid of losing because you feel that there is in him 
the capacity for being something which you are not, 
and cannot be. Suppose some day that your friend 
does leave you, not that -his bodily presence is taken 
away. Still he walks by your side, perhaps lives in 
your house, but all of a sudden he begins some higher 
life, enters upon some self-sacrifice for which you are 
not ready. Have you ever had such an experience ? 
It seems as if you had lost your friend. You reach 
out after him, but there he is away above you, walking 
on higher ground, doing diviner things. But gradu- 
ally you find that you have not lost him. Your love 
for him, his love for you, continues. You become 
aware that he is drawing you upward into that new 
region where he has entered, and which through his 
entrance has come to seem familiar and not so far 



THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST 175 

away to you. The self-sacrifice seems not so unnatu- 
ral or hard now that he is living in it. Your love for 
him draws you on into his company, and makes you 
attempt unattempted tilings. He has outgone you 
with his goodness, but he comes back after you with 
his love. He has gone to prepare a place for you, 
and he has come again and received you to himself, 
that where he is there you may be also. 

Or just reverse the case. Suppose that you are 
the more enterprising and ambitions soul. Your friend 
loves you, but he lags behind, appears unconscious of 
his higher powers, of the higher life that he might 
live. How can you start him? Evidently you must 
start yourself. Yon must go out yourself into the 
region where you know he ought to be. It will seem 
as if you were leaving him. You speak to him some 
morning and say, " This is all very pleasant, but I 
will live no longer in this easy, self-indulgent life. I 
am determined to be up and at work for other people." 
Your friend remonstrates. He begs you not to leave 
him. But you go on. And though at first you seem 
to have gone away from him, your higher life becomes 
a revelation to him. Your loA^e is drawing him up. 
It seems less and less an impossibility that he too 
should live a noble and unselfish life, and by and by 
you two are living in a higher fellowship in the higher 
land. What is it that has happened ? You went to 
prepare a place for him, and then you came again 
and received him unto yourself. 

Ah ! there is really no friendship worthy of the 
sacred name where each of the two friends is not 
thus always making ready places for the other in 



176 THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 

higher and higher mansions of the Father's house, 
where each is not always opening to the other some 
higher life. Do not dare to think that friendship is 
a mere pleasant amusement. Do not dare to take 
out of it tlie moral responsibility that makes its depth 
and sacredness. 

Two merchants are partners in a selfish business. 
No thought of charity finds any entrance into their 
sordid shop. By and by one of them learns the duty 
and the joy of helping other j)eop]e. It seems as if 
their sympathy was broken when one has this new 
taste, this new desire. But if the other be worthy of the 
partnership, the time comes when he wins it too, and 
the broken sympathy is reunited on a higher plane. 
Two boys are boon companions in each other's frolics. 
By and by one of them is touched with the desire of 
learning. But if his comrade is worthy of him, he, too, 
after a while is brought up by liis friend's fellowship 
into the realm that he has entered. Husband and wife 
live together in perfect domestic sympathy. Not a 
thought of either that tlie other does not share. But 
when one of them enters into Christ and knows His 
peace and joy, it seems as if for the first time they 
had separated. But the soul tliat has found the 
Saviour comes back with its love, and tells the story 
of the Saviour it has found, and, Andrew-like, brings 
the other soul to the Christ in whose love it has 
found a place. Everywhere this ministry of life to 
life is finding its illustrations. 

And now this is the way in wliich Jesus had been 
treating those disciples of His for the three years in 
which He had been with them. The purpose of His 



THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 177 

mission liad demanded that He should first of all take 
those twelve men and introduce them into higher 
thoughts, new ways of living, new standards, new 
ideas which they had never known before. How 
could He do that? Several ways were open. He 
might read them long lessons, give them abstract 
teaching. He might put on His powder, and, awing 
them with His miracles, make them obey Him as he 
pointed them to a new life. To one who reads the 
Gospels truly, it becomes evident, I think, that He 
deliberately chose another way, a way that involved 
His own personality and made all His disciples' prog- 
ress consist in following Him. First He knit His 
life in with tlieirs. The cords were twisted together 
as they sat and as they Avalked together, as He shared 
their board and bed. He made them know that He 
Avas what they were, and they what He was. He did 
this devotedly, laboriously ; and then when they were 
feeling this completely, some day He suddenly took a 
step across some border which they had thought im- 
passable — He stood clothed in light in some new 
land which they had counted inaccessible. He did 
some act. He manifested some quality, to which they 
never had aspired. He put himself close to God ; and 
then when they stood amazed and seemed to them- 
selves to have lost Him He came back to them by His 
love without coming out of the new goodness which 
He had entered, and He said, "• No, I am this new 
thing not for myself but for you. By all the oneness 
between us, you can be this as well as I, you can be 
holy as I am holy. Now by my holiness, come in. 
Be holy because I am holy. I have proved it possi- 



178 THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 

ble for such as you and I am. I have prepared a 
place for you. Now I am come agam to receive you 
unto myself." 

It was no accidental habit. It was a deliberate 
specific culture. It will be well worth while to linger 
and point out two or three instances of its applica- 
tion. They are the old stories which we have known 
from childhood. Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, 
and He had to pass through Samaria. The Samari- 
tans would not receive Him, because he was a Jew and 
going to the sacred city of the Jews. His disciples 
instantly were full of Jewish indignation. "A 
miracle, a miracle," they cried, "to destroy those 
enemies of the Lord ! " " Wilt thou that we command 
fire to come down from heaven to consume them as 
Elijah did ? " They looked round for Jesus to keep 
company wdth them in their rage. But where was 
He? Afar off, walking in the cool, serene heaven of 
Pity and Toleration. '' Ye know not what manner of 
spirit ye are of," He said. "- The Son of man is not 
come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." He 
had eluded them. He had gone where they could 
not follow Him. They seemed to have lost Him. But 
still His love was around them, and by and by He 
came to them and received them unto Himself ; took 
theiif up into the tolerance where He Himself had 
entered, ^nd the time came when Peter and John 
were laying hands on these Samaritans, welcoming 
them into the Ghristiau churches. Or again, two 
disciples came to Jesus and said^^ ^' There is to be a 
kingdom here upon the earth, here in Judea. Let us 
sit, we pray thee, as thy Viziers, one on thy right 



THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 179 

hand, the other on thy left." Tt was all of the earth, 
ea^th3^ They wanted to hear of the cabinet of the 
new kingdom. But where was Jesus ? " It shall be 
given to those for whom it is prepared of my Father 
which is in heaven." He was far away from earth. 
It was all heavenly, all spiritual to Him. They did 
not understand Him. They had lost Him. But He 
came back for them and took them np into His own 
spiritual conceptions, for the time came when a new 
ambition had swallowed up the old in John, and he 
was writing in his Epistle, " We know that when He 
shall appear we shall be like Him, for Ave shall see 
Him as He is." Or take one more. Jesus lived very 
near to His mother. They must have understood 
each other deeply. But one day He outwent her. He 
entered into a new consecration to His Father which 
she had not imagined. Her touching words we can 
hear still when she seemed to have lost Him. " Son, 
why hast thou dealt thus with us? " But she had not 
lost Him. As she " kept all these things and pondered 
them in her heart," she saw that for her, too, there 
was a mansion of self-consecration in that Father's 
house where her Son had entered. And when His 
consecration at last completed itself at the cross, she 
was with Him there in a compliance as deep as her 
suffering. 

This is Christ's way. Wherever he would have 
His disciples go, He goes first Himself, and through the 
door which He has opened He draws them by His 
love. That is the whole philosophy of Christian 
culture. And that is the meaning of the Incarna- 
tion. God entered into human life ; made Himself 



180 THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 

one with it as He only conicl have done with a nature 
that was originally one with His own. He became 
man as He could not have become brute or stone. 
Then in that human nature He outwent humanity. 
He opened yet unopened gates of human possibility. 
He showed what man might be, how great, how god- 
like ! And by the love and oneness He has always been 
claim.ing man for the greatness whose possibility He 
showed. As we think of the Incarnation deeply, 
these three stages come in one thought. First, the 
God in Christ seems very near to us as we think of 
His love. Then He seems very far above us as we 
think of His holiness, and thei> again He seems to 
bring us very near to Himself as we feel His power. 
He is one with us. He goes beyond us, and He 
comes again and receives us unto Himself. 

Thus we trace Christ's treatment of those first 
disciples. And what then? Here we live at this 
late day. Is any such method at work, any such cul- 
ture possible now ? My dear friend, one thing is 
certainly true about Christ. That all that He has 
ever been He must forever be. All that He was to 
those first disciples. He must be ready to be to any 
one, even the least of His disciples always. His 
power is nothing at any one point if it is not power- 
ful at all points ; nothing, if not eternah How is it 
possible, then, that Christ should do for you and me 
what He did for Peter and John, and Matthew and 
Nathanael ? It is not hard to see, and to many peoj^le 
living just such lives as we live it has become the 
most real of experiences. Jesus, the Jesus of tlie 
Gospels, fastens His life to our life. By His life and 



THE LEADEKSHTP OF CHRIST. 181 

death, bearing witness of His love, He twines Himself 
into our being. To love Him becomes a real thing. 
He is close by our side. He is right in our lot every 
day. Then as we go on living thus with Him some 
crisis of our life occurs, some need of action. We are 
put to some test, and as wo stand doubting, or as we 
go and do the act in our low way, Christ, right by 
our side, does it in His higher way. Not that His 
hands visibly toucli our tools and do the work we 
have to do. But it becomes evident to us what He 
would do under our circumstances, v/hat one only 
thing it would be possible for Him to do as wo are 
situated. It is very different from what we are 
actually doing. We are truckling to men's opinion, 
compromising principle, telling a lie. And it is made 
manifest to us that Jesus in just those same circum- 
stances would defy men's judgments and stand by 
principle and tell the truth. We are not up to that. 
We see Him leave us. He outgoes us. But if we 
really love Him, if our life has grown one with His, 
He does not leave us really. His going on into prin- 
ciple, honor, truth, and God is a pledge and promise 
that in those holy homes there is a place for us, too, 
and soon we are restless unless we follow Him, and 
the gates of that nobler life Avhich He has opened 
shine before us, and His love draws us on to be with 
Him. 

Look at the progress of Christendom. Christ fust 
touched the world's heart, fastened Himself into the 
world's life. He did not begin with a lecture or a 
lesson. He began by coming Himself to the world ; 
and the world took Him, as it has taken so many of 



182 THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 

His choicest treasures, through suffering and death 
into her life. And then having come to her and fas- 
tened His love upon her, He went away from her. He 
set up impracticable standards. He lived an appar- 
ently im230ssible life. The world was full of war, and 
He preached peace. The world was full of pride, and 
He was humble. The world was false, and He by 
every word and action said, " Be true." The world, 
looking at Christ, said, " We never can be that;" but 
more and more the world has become that ; Christ first 
touching it by His love has little by little drawn it on 
into His character ; and peace, humility, and truth are 
no longer vague dreams, but recognized ambitions, 
earnest hopes, here and there real attainments, among 
men. 

And so I ask an earnest Christian how he began to 
pray, wdien it first came to seem possible to him that 
he should forgive his enemy or live in the realized 
companionship of God? And his answer must be, 
^' Christ, my Lord, having bound my life to His life, 
went there first and then drew my life after His. I 
saw Him pray. I heard Him speak forgiveness from 
the cross. I watched His feet treading close to God, 
and because I must be where He was, I left the old 
life and went with Him into the new. My love to Him 
,was first the revealer of the higher possibility, and 
then the power of entrance into it. 

This is what I really understand by being saved 
by Christ's love. This is what it means, dear friend, 
when always you are urged to love Christ so that 
you may be saved. It is not that Christ stands jeal- 
ously and arbitrarily and will not admit you to His 



THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 183 

privileges until 3^011 have certain feelings about Him. 
It is that only by loving Him can your life be so 
bound to His that where He goes you Avill go witli 
Him, into holiness and peace. Alas ! that men are 
so unambitious. Here is a man who in times of 
business trouble is distressed and anxious. He can- 
not help letting his troubles depress him. He is 
discouraged and disheartened. Is that necessary? 
Who is the noblest man that ever lived ? Jesus 
Christ, you answer. And do you know what He 
would be if He were in your place ? " Yes," you say ; 
''brave, strong, hopeful, conscious always that there 
are better things than monej" — ready to lose the 
fortune if He could get nearer God, calra and serene 
and undismayed." Very well, that is what the high- 
est man would do in your place. And why are you 
not doing it? '' Because I am not Christ," you say ; 
" I must not expect of myself what He would do." 
Ah ! that is just your error. That is just where you 
lose the truth of the Incarnation. Whatever Christ 
is we can be. Wherever Christ goes we can go. 
Say that over and over to j^ourself. Eeacl the assur- 
ance of that written on every page of the New Testa- 
ment. He does go away from you. He leaves you 
in your lowness and enters into the higher lands of 
God, but only that He may take your soul afterwards 
and bring it there to Himself. You are a slave here 
to the world, to men, to business. Your only free- 
dom is in intercourse with Christ. Bind your soul to 
His, and it must rise with Him into His liberty. You 
know that this is true. You know that you could 
not be such a slave of the world, so beaten by temp- 



184 THE LEADERSHIP OF CHEIST. 

tation, so trodden down by trouble, if you really 
loved Christ. In that love there must be freedom 
and power to go where He is, away from anxiety and 
sin into peace and holiness. 

There is one feature about the truth which I Ikivc 
tried to preach to you this morning which is very 
beautiful. The truth is that every Christian enters 
into every higher spiritual condition not absolutely 
and by himself, but through Christ. But one conse- 
quence of that will be that every higher -spiritual 
state will shine to the Christian soul that lives there, 
not merely with its own lustre, but with the personal 
dearness of the Christ through whom the soul has 
gained its entrance. Just a^ a delightful study, into 
which some dear friend flrst initiated you, has always 
over and above its own delightf ulness a beauty that 
comes from your love to him ; so the soul that Jesus 
has made holy lives always in the beauty of holiness, 
made more exquisite and dear by the loveliness of 
Christ. Of every Oarthly grace as well as of the 
heavenly glory it is true that '^ the Lamb is the light 
thereof." Every new attainment which the Christian 
makes is but an entrance into another mansion which' 
his Saviour has made ready for him. He grows brave ; 
but Christ was brave before him. He enters into 
self-sacrifice ; but Christ leads him with His cross. He 
finds the home of his soul at last in perfect commun- 
ion Avith God ; but the Godhood is familiar and doubly 
dear to him because of the Christhood through which 
he enters it. Ail virtue, all holiness and truth 
throughout the universe loses the chill of abstractness 
and glows with the Avarmth of personal love. 



THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 185 

This brings us around to say a few last words upon 
the first application of these words of Jesus to which 
I just alluded at the beginning of the sermon. He 
was just leaving this world for the other when He 
spoke them first. When Christ has led His disciple 
on and on from stage to stage of spiritual grow^th, at 
last He opens the door and gives him entrance into 
heaven. Eemember always, what I have tried to in- 
sist upon this morning, that that new change is of the 
same sort as the others that have gone before it. 
Whatever other joy and Glory may be waiting for us 
in heaven, the Glory and the joy which will be most 
to us, and which w^e ought most of all to anticipate, is 
that there there will be new regions of spiritual life 
thrown open, new and deeper experiences of the scul 
made possible, deeper knowledge of God, deeper 
knowledge of ourselves, deeper delight in purity. 

If that is really what we are looking forward to in 
heaven, then it is easy to realize tliat the same Christ 
who has been our leader in each spiritual advance 
which we have ever made here, will be the leader 
who will bring us there. Oh, the next life seems all 
so vague to us ! We reach out after it. We believe 
in it, but how hard it is for us to take hold of it ! 
How can we? Only by living here with Him who 
is to bring us there. Only by growing so familiar 
with Christ that when He outruns us and enters in 
behind the veil, when the strings of His influence 
outgo our mortal state and run into the darkness, 
we may still feel the tug upon them from beyond the 
darkness and know the reality of heaven because 



186 THE LEADERSHIP OF CHRIST. 

our Christ is there. By constant living with the Eter- 
nal, so only can you realize Eternity. 

To one who believes that Christ, having led him on 
through this life, will lead him at last by the same 
culture to the other world, the supreme expectation 
of that other world is that there he will see Christ. 
It ceases to be dreadful and far off. When he sees 
his friend die, when he gives his little child to death, 
there is nothing cold or lonely or forlorn about it. 
He knows the Christ to whom they go ; when he 
thinks of his own death, it is only of the opening of 
another door behind which the Hand, whose pressure 
he knows w^ell already, shall clasp his hand a little 
more closely to lead him on into a little richer light 
and happiness. It is the same Christ who has been 
making a place in us for the Kingdom of Heaven who 
will at last make a place in the Kingdom of Heaven 
for us. 

To welcome all His leadings now so cordially that 
we shall know our Leader when He opens the last 
great door ; to be always following Him so obediently 
that we shall have faith to follow Him even when He 
leads us into the river and into darkness, — this, and 
onl}^ this, is readiness for death. May God grant it 
to us all ! • 



XI. 

PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

" Now the God of hope fill you with all Joy and Peace in 
Believing, that ye may abound in Hope through the Power of the 
Holy Ghost." — Romans xv. 13. 

Although I wish to speak -tins morning of only 
one phrase occurring in this verse, I quote the whole 
verse, because it will be good for us if we can catch 
its spirit and feel the enthusiasm that pervades it. 
See how the most glowing words are crowded into 
it : " The God of Hope," '' Joy," " Peace," " Believ- 
ing," then "Hope," again, and ''Power," and "the 
Holy Ghost." Any short verse with words like 
these in it must have vitality and vigor. Out of the 
centre of it let us take one expression. St. Paul 
asks for these Roman Christians that they may be 
filled with " Peace in Believing." To see just what 
he is asking for them, what " Peace " is, and what 
" Believing " is, and how Peace everywhere comes by 
Believing, this will be our subject. We feel at once, 
I think, that we are dealing with large words, with 
words which have something of the manifoldness of 
life, and which like life it is hard to reduce to <a clear 
definition. Take this word " Peace." We all have 
our ideas about it. To all of us it represents some- 
thing very attractive and complete. But I suppose 



188 PEACE IX BELIEVING. 

that to all men Peace means something different ac- 
cording to their different characters. And the main 
difference must be in the positiveness ornegativeness 
with which it presents itself to them. To the slug- 
gish man, peace must mean mere repose, the cessa- 
tion of work. To the active man peace must mean 
merely the power and chance of work free from inter- 
ference. "Leave meat Peace," says the lazy man, 
and as he says it he drops the tools which the world 
has thrust into his hands and lies down to go to 
sleep. *' Leave me at Peace,'' says the busy man, 
and turns to his tools and his task, with the thought 
of how much he can do when he and his task are left 
to one another. The men of negatives and the men 
of positives are everywhere, — the men who describe 
things by what they are not, and the men who de- 
scribe things by what they are. It seems to be one 
of the fundamental divisions of human character. 
And there is hardly any idea in relation to which 
this difference comes out more clearly than in rela- 
tion to this idea of Peace. But evidently the posi- 
tive man's notion of it must be the truest and 
highest. Peace must be in its essence something 
real in a man's life, and the exemptions and negations 
that it brings must be its incidents. And when we 
look carefully for a definition that shall be positive 
and that shall include the highest idea of peace, must 
it not be this ? Peace is the entire harmony between 
the nature of anything and its circumstances. That 
is what every healthy aspiration after peace is really 
seeking for. Whether it be high in its sphere or 
low, whether it be the star moving calmly in its 



PEACE IN" BELIEVING. 189 

orbit, or the seed silently Avedding itself to the rich 
ground in which it is buried, or whether it be the 
laborer at his plough or the statesman in the capitol, 
wherever there is a nature in harmony with its sur- 
roundings, so that they call out all its best activities 
and at the same time it is able to answer all their 
demands, there is Peace. All the disturbances of 
peace come from the breaking of this harmony. 
Sometimes on one side, and sometimes on the other. 
Sometimes the nature has powers and capacities for 
wdiich the surroundings offer no employment. Some- 
times the surroundings teem with demands for which 
the nature has no powers. In either case you have 
unrest and discontent. But when the two corre- 
spond, then everything moves smoothly. There is 
abundant motion. There is no sleep. But motion 
without fatigue, or waste, or need of refreshment or 
repair, that is the finished idea of Peace. We talk 
about the "Peace of God." Is not this really the con- 
ception which, carried to its highest, reaches that sub- 
lime idea ? " My father worketh hitherto and I 
work," said Jesus. It is no Oriental apathy. The 
Christian thought of God is full of interest, zeal, 
emotion, action, only it is always perfectly balanced 
with its surroundings, since its surroundings are the 
utterance and creation of itself. God and the uni- 
verse in their unbroken harmony. The universe 
never asking anything of God which God cannot do. 
God having no power or affection which the universe 
cannot utter. That is the Perfect Peace. To match 
that consummate Peace in our lower little sphere, to 
be to our world as God is to His, to work as perpetu- 



190 PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

ally and yet as calmly and so effectively as He works; 
that is the real thing that we pray for when we ask 
for one another the Peace of God. 

With this idea of what Peace really is, we can see 
where the failures come in of the attempts at peace 
which men are always making. The secret of Peace 
is in perfectly harmonious relations between a nature 
and its surroundings. The loss of Peace, then, will 
come either in the abandonment or in the distortion 
of these relations. Wherever any being withdraws 
itself, and does not have anything to do with those 
objects and tasks to which it naturally belongs, it 
loses its true peace. Wherever it remains among 
them and deals with them, but uses them wrongi}^, it 
too has no peace. It will be clearer if we take an 
instance. Here is your nature, and here is its envi- 
ronment, its surrounding, which is the society in 
which you live. Tlie result of your living with that 
society ought to be one large, quiet, liealthy, active, 
restful condition which could be rightly named by 
the great name " Peace." You ought to help that 
society, to make it purer, wiser, happier; and you 
ought to feel it continually helping you, making you 
happier, wiser, purer. You lose all the richness of 
such a life in either of two ways. You may re- 
fuse to have anything to do with the society you 
live in, make yourself a recluse, or you may enter 
into false relationship with it, be arrogant, and over- 
bearing, and selfish, and try to compel it to minister 
to your pride and luxury, or be servile and obsequi- 
ous, and let it domineer over your conscience and 
self-respect. In either case, you are not at peace 



PEACE IN BELIEVING. 191 

with it, and you live a peaceless life. A disused re- 
lation, or a misused relation, is fatal to the comfort- 
able and healthy action of a life. It is as if you had 
to travel around the world or through a long stretch 
of woods with one companion. To ignore him, and 
act as if he were not walking by your side, or to 
quarrel with him, or to impose on him, or let him 
impose himself on you, either of these destroys the 
pleasure and profit of your journey. Only in mutual 
helpfulness and respect can you find peace. And 
what is true of going through the woods with a 
friend, is true also of going through the world with 
your wealth, with your conscience, with nature, 
with duty, with pleasure, and w^ith the constant 
presence of God. 

Let us count this, then, our definition of Peace. It 
is harmonious relation with our surroundings, and 
evidently, then. Peace will become a deeper and deeper 
word, a deeper and deeper thing to men as they be- 
come aware more and more of what their surround- 
ings are, as they open their eyes to more and more 
intimate and sacred things with which they have to 
do. And so the opposite of Peace, namely, disquiet, 
unrest, will also become more and more rccil to a man 
as he comes to the knowledge of his circumstances, 
of the beings and powers which surround his life 
with which he ought to be in harmony, but which he 
is either ignoring altogether, or to which he is relating 
himself wrongly. Let us see a little what the deep- 
ening degrees of such disquiet in a man's life are. 
And, first, most patent of all, so that we often get no 
farther in our use of the word "Peace " than its appli- 



192 PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

cation to that relationship, there is the position in 
which a man stands to the world about him and to 
his fellow-men. There is one, and only one, concep- 
tion of the world in which a man necessarily assumes 
a right attitude and relationship to his fellow-men. It 
is that conception which thinks of the whole world as 
God's Family. The instant that that idea is pre- 
sented and comprehended, peace looms np in the dis- 
tance as a possibility. Just as fast and just as far as 
that idea is realized in a man's own life, he comes to 
be at peace — a high, pure, intelligent peace — with 
his fellow-men ; not the peace of compromise nor of 
armed defiance, but the peace of clearly understood 
relationships and mutual love and mutual help. For 
just see how the lack of peace shows itself in yon as 
it concerns your fellow-men. I take you for the 
average man, neither worse nor better. If you are 
like most men, what is your relation at this moment 
to other mortals ? Well, there are probably a few. 
some three or four — perhaps, if you are usually 
offensive or unfortunate, a dozen — men with whom 
you have quarrels, you do not speak to them, and 
speech is the primary pledge of common human brother- 
hood. It may be you are all ready to do them 
an injury if the chance offers, or, if it is not as bad as 
that, you never count them in the number of those 
to whom you can do any good ; and, if we think of 
it, it is a dreadful thing that almost all of us should 
have some such little fragment, reprobate from any 
grace of ours, cut out of the great bulk of the human 
race. And then, besides these men with whom you 
quarrel, there is the vast multitude to whom you are 



PEACE TX BELIEVING, 193 

entirely indifferent, with whom 3^ou think that you 
have no concern whatever. And next to them, an- 
other company whom j^ou are always trying to out- 
strip and get the better of, people whom you count 
your inferiors, on whom you impose your will, whom 
3^ou domineer over if you can. And next to those, 
another company to whom you truckle, whose author- 
ity and domination you accept, before whom you 
are servile. And then, besides these, smaller groups 
towards whom you hold still other unworthy rela- 
tions. There are children whom you treat as toys. 
There are good men whom you dread as bores* 
There are false men whom you admire as heroes. 
Now, sum all these up, and then remember that Peace 
consists in just and harmonious relations to our sur- 
roundings, and then ask yourself whether you are, in 
any true, high sense, at peace with j'our fellows-men. 
You see that it is not by any means the mere amount 
of declared war. Out of policy, or out of good-nature, 
you may have kept clear of that entirely. But it is 
the false adjustments, it is the untrue relationship, in 
which you stand to them that make the absence of 
peace between your life and theirs. 

And all that I have said about our relations to 
other men might be said in a true sense of our 
relation to all the external world — to nature, to the 
physical forces, to the social laws, to everything not 
ourselves on which our lives act, and which acts on 
them. 

But the next step takes us to ourselves. It is 
only the most superficial people that recognize 
merely their relations of peace or discord with the 



194 PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

external world, and never ask whether they are at 
peace with themselves. To be at peace with a man's 
own self ! We use the phrase ; we think we under- 
stand it. There are certain comfortable and satis- 
fied conditions in which we think we have attained 
the thing. But we do not really understand it till 
we have got this fundamental idea of what peace is, 
the harmony of a being with its surroundings. Now, 
every man has these two parts in him : a will en- 
circled by its cabinet or council of affections, and a 
system of powers which that will governs. The true 
relation between the will and the powers constitutes 
the true peace of the life. Will using powers to 
their best capacity. Powers supplying will with all 
the instruments it needs. Now turn again, and look 
at your own life. Are you at peace with yourself? 
If your will is taking your powers, which were made 
to do noble and gentle and generous things, and 
forcing them to do sordid and brutal and mean 
things ; if you are living a life of miserable drudgery, 
treating yourself like a machine ; or if you are living 
a life of dissipation, treating yourself like a brute, 
then you are not at peace with yourself surely. 
Yourself is misusing, is abusing yourself. There 
is war between your will and your- powers, as 
there is war between the harp and the hand that 
smites discord from its tortured strings. A man is 
both harp and harper. The harp may not complain, 
but all the time the music it was meant to make sleeps 
in its strings, and it cannot be at peace with the 
cruel fingers that make it unmusical. And in your 
powers sleeps the nobleness that they were made to 



PEACE IN BELIEVING. 195 

do, in everlasting protest against the wickedness to 
which you compel them. O my dear friends, to be 
at peace with ourselves is not to loosely approve 
ourselves in what we are. It is to vfork with our- 
selves, that we may be all that God made us for. 

Evidently it is a great deal deeper discord when 
a man is not at peace w^ith himself than when he is 
not at peace with his brethren. But there is some- 
thing deeper, something nearer to us even than our 
brethren or ourselves. And that is God. The vvill 
of God, which is the law of holiness, is the deepest 
and inmost thing of all this world. And the ulti- 
mate question of every human life is, whether he is 
at Peace with God. Once more remember what 
Peace is. It is the being rightly and harmoniously 
related with that with which we have to do. Now^, 
the only right relation of man to the will of God 
IS loving obedience, affectionate and happy loyaltj'. 
What then ? If j^ou are simply ignoring God alto- 
gether, living as if there v/ere no God, jon are not 
at peace with Him. Or if you are absolutely defying 
Him, doing what you know is wrong, what you 
know He hates, then certainly you are not at peace 
with Him. Or yet again, remember this, if you are 
serving Him in mere slavery, doing His Vv^ill simply 
because you must, disliking it, disliking Him all the 
time you do it — in either case you are not at peace 
v/ith God. Here we have reached the bottom of 
Peacelessness. Indeed, this discord must include all 
others. For this discord, in one word, is sin, and I 
think we can see at once how inclusive it makes sin. 
It compels it at once to be large enough to embrace 



196 PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

the neglect of God ; not simply the violation of His 
commandments by positive disobedience, but the 
absence of anj^ thought about Him, the absolutely 
worldly life which tries to satisfy itself without Him ; 
all this evidently is a discord which makes sin, if 
peace be really the completeness of harmonious rela- 
tions. Are you at peace with God ? The question 
comes to some man living his ordinary worldly life, 
and he looks up and answers, " Yes ; I pay Him rev- 
erence ; I never blaspheme His name ; sometimes I 
try to pray to Him a little, and I hope that He will 
take care of me when I die. Surely I am at peace 
with Him." But are you really, if peace means 
nothing less than the existence between your life 
and His of all the relations and affections which 
ought to be between the infinite Father and His 
child? Are you really at peace with Him, if peace 
means loving loyalty ? 

And then, add one thought more. Remember how 
no sin belongs entirely to the moment that commits 
it ; remember, what you will onl}" need to look into 
your own history to know is true, how sin clings to 
the nature that has done it, and lays itself like a 
shadow between the soul that sinned and the God 
against whom the sin was done. Remember this, and 
then, not only the sin which you are doing now meas- 
ures the discord between your soul and God — all 
that you have ever done, all your past comes in. By 
all that you are shut out from peace with Him. Your 
relations to His life to-day are broken and distracted 
because of all that you have done, of neglect or 
disobedience.^ in all these accumulated years. 



PEACE IX BELIEVING. 197 

And now look over this account. Is there not 
somethmg very terrible in seeing where we stand? 
A man, a soul, a will set here in the midst of forces 
which are touching it on every side, with all of v/hicli 
it might relate itself nobly and to beautiful results ! 
And see what is the case ! Out of our neighbors we 
are getting never the best, — often the very worst; 
ourselv^es we are dishonoring, misusing ; the Will of 
God we are neglecting or disobeying. There, in those 
deep disturbances, lie the real discords, the real 
tragedies of life. Not in the mere discontent and 
chaffing, not in the querulousness and restlessness, 
the envying, the perpetual wish to be away from 
where we are, to be somewhere, something else. Not 
in these is the deepest, saddest essence of our lack of 
Peace. These are only the symptoms. The real 
wretchedness is in the essential wrong relations in 
which we have set ourselves to fellow-man and our- 
selves and God. The true picture of Peace is simply 
the restoral of true relations, so that each soul of 
us should give its full due to, and so get its full due 
from, the souls around it, and its own self, and the 
soul of God, its Father. 

And now, with this conception of Peace clearly 
before us, let us go on to what is always the next 
question. How can this condition, so precious in 
itself, be won ? How can all things be brought to 
such a state that they shall do their best and most 
harmonious work in the fulfilment of their truest re- 
lations to themselves and to each other ? And one 
answer immediately suggests itself, which I think we 
shall find to fall in with St. Paul's verse which is our 



198 PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

text. As soon as we come to any thoughtful exami- 
nation of the world we find that everything is finite 
and limited, and lives at its best only in relation to 
other things. Everything is a part, nothing is com- 
plete and absolutely a whole. And it is only in rec- 
ognition of this fact, only in counting itself a part, 
only by living along with the other parts, within the 
embrace and envelopment of the whole, that every- 
thing does its best work and so attains its best peace. 
This is a universal principle. Everything falls into 
disorder, runs wild, loses its symmetry and its effec- 
tiveness, unless it feels around it, as it lives and 
works, the embrace and restraint and protection of 
the controlling whole of which it is a portion. And 
peace for finite creatures only comes by such envel- 
opment. The illustrations of this are numberless. 
The peace of the family consists in the envelopment 
of the household by the father's life. Each child's 
life finds its place and plays its part within the girdle 
of that authority and love. The father, in the old 
Saxon phrase, is the " husband," the " houseband," 
that holds the parts in their places, and makes each 
keep its true relation to itself and to the rest. And 
so the work of all goes on, and Peace is within the 
happy walls. And so a man's life grows peaceful 
and effective when it has some great controlling idea 
which is bound about it, as it were, to keep each ac- 
tion and thought in its place, in true subjection and 
relation to other thoughts and actions. Within such 
an enveloping idea no upstart action or thought 
makes confusion by trying to lord it over the rest ; 
each tries only to help fulfil that which is the great 



PEACE IX BELIEVING. 199 

purpose of the living, and so the Peace of the natural 
world is preserved by the harmonious working of all 
its laws within that one great mysterious enveloping 
whole which is so real to us that we give it a name 
and call it nature. All our science, finding unity and 
simplicity of force everywhere, is making that exist- 
ence, that being nature, more and more real, contin- 
ually. So everywhere. A picture has peace when all 
its details are harmonized and held within some dom- 
inant idea. A stor}^ has its prevalent purpose ; a 
piece of music its controlling theme ; a government 
its policy. Everything, in so far as it is a part, is held 
in safety and given the chance to do its best work 
only as it is included Avithin some greater whole. 
That whole in its time becomes a part in some whole 
that is larger still ; and so out to the infinite, which 
nothing can limit or contain, this system of envelop- 
ment goes on. I want to state it just as generally as 
I can, because I want to show that St. Paul's special 
statement of a special Christian truth is part of a 
universal law which runs everywhere. All Christian 
truth is in harmony with, is but one utterance, is the 
highest and fullest announcement of, the universal 
truth, the truth of the universe. And so the broad- 
est statement of St. Paul's utterance here is this : 
that everything lives its full life and does its full 
work, or, in other words, completes that condition of 
absolutely perfect relationships which we saw was 
what Peace meant, only as it lives and works within 
the compass of something greater than itself, which 
holds each part into its place, and to which each part 
must be loyal, obedient, and true. 



200 PEACE IK BELIEVING. 

Just for one moment pause and think of that great 
idea of Peace by Envelopment. It has no end or limit 
until we come to God. The prerogative, the distinc- 
tion of the di\dne life is this, that it, and it alone, is 
self-enveloping. There is nothing beyond it. It is 
held within nothino^. It holds all thinofs within 
itself. There is nothing to which God is bound to 
be true but God. '' Because He could swear by no 
greater," the epistle says, " He sware by His own 
self." Included within His life there lie first the 
great primary ideas which are forever true in Him. 
Within these ideas, loyal to them, only powerful as 
they embody and enforce them, lie the laws Avliich 
all men own. Within these laws, held into peace 
and power by obedience to them, are all the positive 
institutions of mankind, the family, the state, the 
church. Within these institutions live the lives of 
men, harmonious and effective just in proportion as 
they perceive and cordially acknowledge their envel- 
opment. And then, these lives again envelop one 
another. Countless systems are formed and live 
within this great system. The larger the envelop- 
ment that each life is aware of, the more effectively 
it works. The greater its loyalty and trust, the more 
true it is to itself and to all the sharers of the same 
envelopment. Every harmonious and effective work- 
ing, though it may be aware only of the envelop- 
ment that touches it most immediately, is really held 
within the great all-embracing envelopment of God 
Every action i3 exalted to its highcot self-conscious- 
ness when it feels, through all the intermediate 
envelopments, that outermost envelopment of all. 



PEACE IN BELIEVING. 201 

the holding of God, and answers back to it, sending 
through all inferior loyalties a last consummate loy- 
alty to Him. '^In Him we live and move and have 
our being." 

And now, what shall we call this law, — the law that 
every power comes to its best and most harmonious 
action only within a larger envelopment to which it 
trusts itself and to which it is loyal ? This faithful- 
ness to an enveloping principle and power — wliat is 
it really but belief ? The child believes in its father. 
The life believes in its idea. The law believes in its 
principle. Everything lives and works by believing 
in something larger than itself, until you come to 
God. God believes in Himself. With Him alone, in 
all the universe, is self-belief, the condition of the 
highest life. And so the truth which I have been 
trviiiof to state, a truth which in some form or other 
breaks out everywhere through all the w^orld, is really, 
as you see, the truth v/hich is wrapt up in St. Paul's 
phrase, — " Peace in Believing." And if the truth 
which I have tried to state is true, there is no peace 
anywhere in all the world save in believing. No 
high complete activity of anything, no fulfilment by 
anything of all its natural capacity, unless it is held 
in the hand of something greater than itself. Oh, the 
disjointed, distorted little bits of life that such a 
truth explains ! All the w^orld, all the society we 
study, is full of little fragments of activity, little rest- 
less bits of movement which vex us with their cease- 
less action of brain and hand and heart which comes 
to nothing. Society and the w^orld often come to 
seem to us, I think, like a watchmaker's shop where 



202 PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

there are small pieces of unattached clock-work 
lymg scattered about, each running by itself, accom- 
plishing nothing because each is fastened to no 
weight, which it has to move, no purpose which it 
is trying to fulfil. Clicking and clattering, they keep 
the shop in a perpetual confusion. There is no peace. 
Mere motion with no work. Mere action with no 
unity. Each separated bit of machinery has no envel- 
opment, belongs to nothing, beheves in nothing. So 
is it with a multitude of lives among us. Active 
from mere irrepressible impulse, their action is all 
restlessness. They belong to nothing. They believe 
in nothing. No loyalty to principle or fellow-man or 
God envelops them. Their lives inspire us with 
continual dissatisfaction, and they are not satisfied 
with themselves. There is no better thing to see 
than that which comes when one of these bits of 
machinery is taken up and set into its true envelop- 
ment. When a man's activity is rescued from aim- 
lessness by learning some devotion, and the man, 
beginning to believe in something, gains peace in 
believing. 

This, then, is the general statement of our truth. 
And now turn and see what is St. Paul's peculiar 
Christian statement of it. His Peace in Believing is 
to be distinctly a Peace by Gospel Faith, by faith in 
the Incarnation and Atonement of Jesus Christ. Is 
this, then, something different entirely from what we 
have been speaking of? Surelj^ not. It is simply 
the completion and consummation of them all. 
Around a man's life fold its various envelopments. 
The man's peace depends upon whether he is in 



PEACE IN BELIEVING. 203 

living and true relations to all of them. Now, the 
Gospel of Christ is simply the perfect presentation 
of all these envelopments to the soul of man ; and he 
who is in the power of the Gospel, he wlio approaches 
everything with whicli he has to do in Christ, finds 
his true relation to everything. Shall we trace this 
out? Shall we look one moment in this new light 
at the different departments in which we saw that 
the peace or the peacelessness of human lives resided? 
Peace with oar fellow-men. How will that come 
about by faith in Jesus Christ ? If Jesus Christ is 
the perfect humanity, the consummation of all human 
hopes and desires, the visible achievement of that 
perfection to which all our brethren's lives are strug- 
gling, then must not he who sees his brethren not in 
themselves, not as if this whicli they are now w^ere 
the end and crown of all that they could be, but in 
Him, in Christ, reading their possibility in His com- 
plete attainment — must not such a man be filled 
with Pity and with Hope and with Respect for the 
greatest and for the most insignificant of men? And 
these three are the elements of peace. Let me be a 
thorough believer in Jesus Christ, let me, that is, 
have taken Him with all the revelation of humanity 
that there is in Him, and where is the fellow-man 
with wdiom I shall not be at peace ? Is it the man 
who domineers over me and bullies me? The 
supreme mastery of my Lord adjusts these lower 
masteries and compels them to keep their proper 
places. When I have learned really to ^' fear Him 
who can cast both soul and body into hell," I am 
able indeed not to ^'fear them that can kill the 



2C4 PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

body/' The martyr seeing Christ standing at the 
right hand of God is at full peace with his mur- 
derers. Is it the man who vexes me with his 
stupidity, whose awkwardness and spiritual sloth 
seem even to be hindering the salvation of the world ? 
If I believe in Christ, the possibility of that man 
opens before me. He is a child of God. Pity, en- 
thusiastic desire to waken him and call him to the 
knowledge and use of his sonship. These maj^ fill 
me, but I can have none of that petty personal irrita- 
tion which is the destruction of peace. No ; there is 
no one to whom a true faith in the divine humanity 
of the Redeemer does not adjust my life, calling out 
my best power of appreciation, and my best power 
of help, bringing me Peace. 

And then, my discord with myself. It is as old as 
that wonderful story in the seventh chapter of the 
Epistle to the Romans. The way in which a Belief 
in Christ harmonizes that struo^orle of the two w^ills 
which makes our inner peacelessness. Deeper than 
every revelation that Christ gives me about these, 
my brother men being God's children, is His revela- 
tion to me that I am the Child of God. When He 
has shown me that, then I know which of these two 
wills in me is master. The other will is not killed 
out. It lives, but it is conquered. And just as 
there was peace in the land as soon as the Rebellion 
was crushed and the power of the rightful govern- 
ment everywhere established, even though still 
rebellious outbreaks here and there showed that the 
old fire was not totally extinguished, so there is 
peace in me when the divine Christ has become my 



PEACE IN BELIEVING. 205 

master and is strengthening my love of right every 
day with His imparted righteousness ; even tliough 
still the evil wishes haunt the dark places and break 
out from the outward thickets of my soul. The 
peace of a man witli his own self when his sonship 
to God is perfectly established as the fact, and his 
return to his Father is perfectly established as tlie 
law of his life by faith in Christ the Son of God ! 
Why, here in our country there has been a poor, 
unhappy father whose child was stolen from him 
years ago, as all the land has heard with a heart full 
of sympathy. Think of that child wherever he may 
be, if he is still alive to-day ! Think of the restless- 
ness in his young heart ! Think of the dim and 
dying memories in conflict with the thiugs that are 
around him day by day ! Think how, while others 
can find perfect satisfaction in the life he leads, 
because they never have known any other, down at 
the bottom of his heart there is perpetual unrest { 
And now suppose the father finds liis child. The 
house is open — the home-life folds itself around 
him. Where is the unrest then? Still this strange 
exile haunts him with its memories and its power. 
But the dominion of the life is fixed again where it 
belongs, and held in the hand of that dominion, the 
jarred and disordered activities of heart and mind 
and outward habit begin to beat again truly, and 
once more there is Peace. 

I need not stop, as certainly I must not stop, to 
tell how tlie third element of perfect peace, peace 
with the law of God, comes by the faith in Jesus 
Christ. One of the words which we make far too 



206 PEACE IN BELIEVING. 

little is that great word "forgiveness." It means 
more than the mere taking off of penalties. It means 
the putting of the soul where penalty cannot find it 
any longer, in the restored fatherhood of God. To 
the soul so brought back what is the relation between 
it and tlie law of that fatherhood, the law of the 
household of God which is to be his home henceforth ? 
Hear David cry, '' Oli, how I love thy law !" and as 
to the restored child the house is always tenfold 
dear because of the exile in w^hich he used to live, 
so to the forgiven soul the law which he obeys is 
always more 'precious, and the joy of obeying it more 
deep, because of the exile of disobedience in which 
he lived, and from which he has been brought back 
by grace. " Oh, how I love thy law I " for to the 
soul which knows God in Christ the law of God is 
the utterance of God, is God, and obedience is not 
only duty — it is love. 

I must not dwell on all this any longer. Let the 
great truth be clear to us to-day. Peace comes by 
belief; not by ourselves or our own strength, but by 
being held in the hand of Him who saved us, do these 
disturbed natures of ours come to their true selves 
and work harmoniously and to their best results. 
Doubt finds its only rest in personal confidence. 
Self-conceit, which is the most peace-destroying thing 
in all the world, is overwhelmed in consecration to 
the Master, and contrition starts from the dust, and 
turns into the very angel of hope and growth when 
once a soul believes in Jesus Christ. 

Oh, then, that over us, perplexed and troubled and 
afraid, as over the disciples in the chamber long 



PEACE IN BELIEVING. 207 

ago, the hand of Jesus might be stretched, and we, 
to-day, might hear Him saying, '' Peace I leave with 
you ; My Peace I give unto you. Believe in Me." 
Oh that our souls may say, '*• Dear Lord, we do 
believe in Thee, and so we claim Thy Peace." 



XII. 
WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 

*' And Balak said unto him, Come, I pray thee, with me unto an- 
other place, from whence thou mayest see them. Thou shalt see 
but the utmost part of them, and shalt not see them all : and curse 
me them from thence." — Numbers xxiii : 13. 

Many of you will recall the story from which 
these words are taken, and the striking picture 
which it draws. The Israelites are travelling through 
the desert. They are approaching the domain of 
Balak, King of Moab. Balak is frightened, and sends 
for the Mesopotamian wizard, Balaam, and bids 
him curse the dangerous intruders. But Balaam, 
filled with a higher spirit than he understands, 
blesses instead of cursing. Again the effort is made 
and the disappointment follows in another place. 
And then it is that there occurs to the monarch the 
idea which is recorded in the text. Perhaps if the 
prophet did not see the whole host in its multitude 
the curse would come more readily. " Let us stand 
where we can only see a part of them," he says. 
" Peradventure thou canst curse me them from 
thence." 

It was a vain expedient. The blessing came still 
pouring forth more richly than before. Why should 
it not? It was not the quantity but the quality of 
Israel which drew the blessing. It was not because 



WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 209 

there were so many of them, but because they were 
set on lofty purposes and carried in their bosom 
mighty spiritual issues, that God took care of them 
and made them strong. It was a hopeless hope of 
Balak. And it was like a child. It w^as the trans- 
parent self-cheat of infancy. So children play with 
themselves and one another, saying, '•' Let us see only 
a part and make believe that that is all." 

It is this childlikeness, this primitive simplicity 
about the incident, which makes it capable of being 
expanded and of applying to all life. The wisdoms 
and policies of childhood find their illustrations 
everywhere. They are so simple that they fit on 
every life. A child says a wise word, and the sage 
catches surprised sight in it of complication sin his 
life of which the little head has never dreamed. A 
child does some act of transparent folly, and by it 
you easily understand the elaborate superstition or 
the intricate villany of the full-grown conspirator or 
bigot. The children go about Avith the keys of our 
conditions in their hands. They hold them up before 
us, and we take them and unlock our problems and 
give them back again, and the children know noth- 
ing of what they have done. 

So is it with tliis childish act of the barbarian 
Balak — so fresh and simple is it that I feel sure I 
shall not fail to find the repetitions of it everywhere. 
And I do I It is about its repetitions that I want to 
talk this morning. I would speak about the modern 
Balaks, who thiiik they can indulge their passions and 
scatter their curses as they please, by shutting their 
eyes to all but some small portion of that with which 



210 WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 

they have to deal. They are the men who wilfully 
take partial views, who will see nothing which will 
interfere with that which they have already made up 
their minds to think or do — especially the men who 
have made up their minds to curse, and who refuse to 
look at that part of a subject or a life which will 
make cursing impossible, and compel a blessing upon 
that which they choose to hate. 

Of such a disposition — and I am sure that you rec- 
ognize the disposition which I mean — the first thing 
that impresses one is its lack of absoluteness. There 
is an absolute truth about everything, something 
which is certainly the fact about that thing, entirely 
independent of what you or I or any man may think 
about it. No man on earth may know that fact 
correctly — but the fact exists. It lies behind all 
blunders and all partial knowledges, a calm, sure, un- 
found certainty, like the great sea beneath its waves, 
like the great sky behind its clouds. God knows it. 
It and the possession of it m.akes the eternal differ- 
ence between God's knowledge and man's. 

It is a beautiful and noble faith when a man thus 
believes in the absolute truth, unfound, unfindable 
perhaps by man, and yet surely existent behind and 
at the heart of everything. It is a terrible thing 
when a man ceases to believe in it, and ceases to seek 
for it. He sinks out of the liighest delight and pur- 
ity. For him the great glory of life is gone. Petty 
and selfish economies sweep in and overwhelm him. 
Not what is true, but what will tell for the advantage 
of something which he thinks valuable, becomes the 
object of his search. He qupstions §vpryt:h}ng, a^ 



WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 211 

the lawyer questions a witness, in the interest of a 
cause. Then comes the Balak folly. Then the man 
shuts his eyes to everything Avhich will not tell upon 
his side. Then he refuses to look upon the whole of 
things, and sees only the portion which will minister 
to his passion or his spite. Oh, keep j'our faith in, 
your love for, the absolute, my friends ! Be sure that 
it exists. To find it, to come a little nearer to find- 
ing it, — that, and not the gaining of a new argument 
or the sustaining of an old prejudice, is what you 
must be craving when you seek for truth. 

In the loss of this faith lies the secret of all parti- 
sanship. The partisan always is a Balak. What is a 
partisan? Is he not simply a man who will see only 
a part of truth, lest he should be compelled to aban- 
don a position which he loves, or to adopt a position 
which he chooses to dislike ? How many men are 
there to-day — Republicans or Democrats or an}' thing 
beside — who are genuinely and really as ready to 
give its full value to a fact when, if it is true, it tells 
upon the other party's side as if it told on theirs ? 
"Behold," you say, ''look at the total case. Take 
in the entire situation, and then condemn this party 
and its leaders and its policies as all foolish or all 
false." Your friend looks, and, Balaam-like, to your 
dismay he breaks out into telling of the good which 
he sees even in this party you despise. What im- 
pulse is morQ natural than yours to say, " Come 
I pray thee, unto another place. Thou shalt not 
see them all. Thou shalt see only that which I 
choose to let thee see of them, and thou shalt curse me 
them from thence." This is not — he would com- 



212 WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 

pletely misunderstand what I am saying who 
thought it was — a mere assertion that there is 
good and bad in everything, and the preaching of a 
feeble vacillation that could never come to any de- 
cisive action. There is just the difference between 
partisanship and reasonable choice. The reasonable 
man who has surveyed the whole condition, by and 
by strikes his balance and announces his result. He 
finds that which is genuinely and hopelessly bad, the 
base, the false, and the impure, and he denounces that 
unsparingly. Then, among honest and honorable 
differences, he judges what he thinks comes nearest 
to the absolute truth, and sustains that with all his 
strength. But he has no curse for the man upon the 
other side. He will not impute miserable motives. 
He is brave as well as bold. He must be just and 
generous as well as strong. And so the policy which 
he contends for is in the end not weaker, but stronger, 
for his breadth of view. 

Away with cursing ! Away with vehement de- 
nunciation which prevents right judgment with the 
intensity of personal passion and dislike!" One man 
denounces civilization. He sees the wretchedness 
and misery of which its streets are full. He hears 
the cry of outraged natures and of ruined souls. He 
says it is an organized selfishness, and he curses it 
with all his heart. Another man denounces educa- 
tion. He says it is superficial and misplaced. He says 
that instead of fitting children, it unfits them, for the 
work of life. He says it makes cultivated villains and 
useless burdens on society ; and so he curses education 
very loudly. Another man denounces society. He 



WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 213 

tells us how selfish and narrow and corrupting is the 
intercourse of man with man. He shows us the 
social world all hone3^combed with insincerity. He 
says, ''Is that the way for the children of God to live 
with one another?" And so he curses society and 
turns ascetic. Another man curses the scientific 
spirit. '' Behold, how hard it is," he says, '' how un- 
believing! How arrogant in its self-conceit I How it 
would reduce life to a desert and the world to a 
machine ! How it despises the spontaneous affec- 
tions ! How it worships its idols ! " And his curses 
fall upon it furious and fast. 

Now notice that all these accusations have their 
truth. Each of these mighty and benignant interests 
is guilty of the sin with which it is charged. But it 
is only as one shuts out all except a little portion of 
it from his view that any man is able to see each of 
these interests absolutely given up to its sin, so that 
he can curse it. In each case if a man takes into 
view the whole of civilization or education or society 
or science, he sees its graciousness and beauty, and 
cannot curse, but bless. And so it is with life in 
general. There are parts of it and aspects of it 
which, if they were all, would make existence an 
accursed thing. ''Come," says the pessimist, "you 
shall not see the whole. I will set you where you 
shall only see a part, and curse me it from thence." 
There is where pessimism is made. The man w^ho 
sees the whole of life must be an optimist. I know 
dark points of view, grim gloomy crags of moral 
vision, hideous observatories on which if a man 
stands he can see nothing but the dreadful side of 



214 WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 

life, its wretchedness, its disappointment, its distress, 
its reckless, wanton, defiant sin. I can see gathered 
on those horrible observation points the despisers, 
the revilers, the cursers of our human life. I know 
that if I went up there and stood by their side, my 
tongue would curse like theirs. But there I will 
not go. If there be any point whence I can see it 
all, however dimly, through whatever clouds, there I 
will go. So will I keep my faith that life is good, 
and work with what strength I can against its evils, 
knowing that I work in hope. 

Upon those dark places of partial vision I know that 
I should never find the great Seer of human life, who 
is Christ. Christ saw all life in God. That means 
that He saw life in its completeness. No being ever 
Baw the evil and misery as He beheld it. He saw sin 
with all the intensity of holiness. But nobody ever has 
dared call Jesus Christ a pessimist. He saw the end 
from the beginning. He saw the depth from the sur- 
face. He saw the light from the darkness. He saw 
the Avhole from the parts. Therefore He could not 
despair. There was no curse of life upon His lips. 
Infinite pity ! A pity that has folded itself around 
the world's torn and bleeding heart like a benediction 
ever since — but no curse ! And wdio are we, with 
our little feeble rage and petulance, flinging our testy 
curses where the Lord's blessing descended like the 
love of God ? Oh, if you ever find yourself cursing 
life, get your New Testament and read what Jesus 
said looking dow^n on Jerusalem from the height of 
the Mount of Olives, looking down on man from 
the measureless height of the cross ! 



WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 215 

Do I talk too general! j^ ? Let me then illustrate 
and enforce all this with instances. A man's career — 
every man's career, we may truly say — is made up 
of struggles and victories or defeats. More defeats 
than victories there are in most men's lives, we think. 
But, however that may be, at least the defeats, the 
weak and wretched failures, the troublesome, exas- 
perating, disappointing incompetency for the work of 
life, force themselves most upon the eyes of those who 
watch their fellow-men. And to a very great many 
people there is a continual temptation to ignore the 
fact of struggle and remember only the fact of defeat. 
It is so satisfactory to take a simple sweeping view 
about your neighbor's life, ta give him one broad 
judgment that has no qualifications, to trample on him 
in the gutter and never ask how he got there. Then 
you can freely curse. Then you cannot merely con- 
demn the deed, but utterly denounce the doer. 

But men do struggle, even those wdio fall at last 
most utterly. It would seem as if anybody needed 
only to remember his own history and to study his 
own consciousness to be assured of that. You think 
of the days when you have sinned most dreadfully. 
Are you willing to accept any man's judgment of those 
days who simply sees the sin. You know, though 
you dare not tell any one besides, of how you fought 
with your temptation. You know the nights of dark- 
ness and the days of hope. You remember the mis- 
ery of the last yielding, and you say, '' He could not 
curse me if he knew it all." 

This is the meaning of the soul's appeal to God. 
" Let my judgment come forth from Thy presence," 



216 WHOLE VIEAVS OF LIFE. 

David cries. Is it that God does not hate sin as man 
does ? Certainly not that. It is that God knows all. 
The struggle and the fall and the repentance all make 
one unit of experience to Him. Therefore He may- 
condemn and He may punish, but He cannot curse. 

And when we thus look at ourselves and into our 
own consciousness, must we not look abroad on 
other men and say, " No prejudice shall force or tempt 
me to a place where I shall see only the blank fact 
that this man has sinned ? No desire of my own soul 
to simplify and emphasize his life shall shut out of my 
sight the wrestling before the fall, the good which 
pleaded against his resistance, and which, though out- 
raged and insulted, is in him still, and will not leave 
him at peace in his wickedness?" 

There is indeed the other vice. Sometimes a man 
insists that you shall stand where you can see nothing 
except the good in him w^ith whom you are to deal. 
He insists on having you make such allowance for the 
temptation that you shall disregard the sin, or having 
you give such value to the struggle that the defeat 
shall seem a small affair. That is not what we w^ant. 
The easy apology or even the profuse admiration 
which may come down from that point of observation 
is not the true and serious man's greeting and judg- 
ment of the life of his brother-man. It is as foolish 
and false as the curse, however more generous and 
kindly it may be. 

Neither of these is just and true, because neither 
of them is complete. Both of them are partial. It 
is a " blessing " that man Avants to give to man, 
and the quality of a true blessing is that it is com- 



WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 217 

plete. Whenever man blesses his brother-man, if he 
is doing the act in all its fulness, it is the complete- 
ness of one nature taking in all the completeness of 
the other. Whatever it is, — the mother giving her 
blessing to her boy as he goes out from the home- 
gate into the dangerous world, the friend who finds no 
words of sympathy for his friend in his great sorrow 
except " God bless you," the priest consecrating the 
hero as he rushes to his duty in the field, the king 
who looks across the millions of his people and pours 
upon them all the blessing of his kingly heart, the 
people who set their king or president into his place 
of burdensome honor with shouts of benediction, 
the neighbor who greets his neighbor with sacred 
words which have not lost their meaning, or the 
children who gather round their father's grave and 
drop their blessings on his dear memory along with 
their tears, — wherever there is real blessing there is 
the sight of the whole nature, there is the compre- 
hension of the total life. Weaknesses are not forgot- 
ten. It is the remembrance of their presence which 
makes the voice tremble as it blesses. Struggle is 
not ignored. It keeps the blessing hopeful when it 
is trembling on the margin of despair. . The whole 
pathetic mixture of the human life is gathered up 
together. Its evil and its good are both in sight. 
The danger and the possibility, the fear and the hope, 
the darkness and the light, are blended in one great 
profound conception of what this wonderful human 
life is; and when, standing where it is all clear 
before him, one human being says to another, '' I 
bless you," it is the largest act which man can do to 



218 WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 

man. Rebuke, and pity, and exhortation, and en- 
couragement, and warning, and exaltation, and prayer 
— all are in it. It is soul meeting soul in the highest 
region and with the closest grasp. 

Jesus " led His disciples out as far as Bethany, and 
He lifted up His hands and blessed them." There 
was no curse on His lips as He left the poor, frightened, 
wilful, ignorant, and stumbling men. "He lifted up 
His hands and blessed them." So may the total re- 
sult of the pressure of our lives upon our brethren's 
lives be blessing ! May we see them so largely that 
a curse shall be impossible ! 

I must say a few words upon two other applica- 
tions of our truth that it is the limited and partial 
sight of the things which makes the curse. 

The first of them refers to the way in which men 
form their judgments about religion. We listen to 
the platform orator, we read the novel of the day, 
and what impresses us is this : the way in which a 
hundred misconceptions have their origin in the per- 
petual tendency to see a part and not the whole, and 
utter vehement and sometimes furious judgments on 
that which finds its reasonableness and meaning only 
w^hen it is set into the system of which it rightly 
makes a portion. Religion is the whole larger life of 
man, seen in the presence and the light of God. 
The Christian religion is the life of man, seen in the 
broad illumination of the supreme and wondrous 
Christ. In Him it finds its wholeness, and its parts 
grow into reconciliation and significance. 

Take for a single instance what is called the fact 
of miracle ; not this or that miraeulous event, but the 



WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE- 219 

whole element of miracle as it appears pervading 
everywhere and coloring the Christian story. I wish 
that I could tell in simple words how the whole 
matter seems to me to stand concerning miracles. 
" The trouble with miracles is that they don't 
happen," is the cry. And men look up and say, 
" Yes, that is true. They do not happen. All moves 
on unmiraculously. We see no wonders." Is that 
all ? Have those ej^es, looking up, beheld the whole of 
Christianity? Have they seen a Being, strange, 
unique, unprecedented, moving majestically among 
men with w^hom He certainly is one, and yet from 
whom, both by the words He says about Himself and 
by the self-witness which His figure bears, is greater 
than the men He walks among, greater than any 
man wlio ever walked upon the eartii ? Have they 
seen Him, living His most exceptional and lofty life, 
and then looked, ready for whatever they might 
witness, to see whether obedient Nature had no 
response to make to Him greater and richer than she 
malves to the long, crowded generations of ordinary 
human life ? If not, is it not right to say that they 
have shut out a part, and then judged of the part 
which still was left as if it were the whole ? 

Here is the true philosophy of miracle. All the 
history of the earth is full of the record of what 
Nature has to say to man, of what she does and says 
in answer to his invitations, to his very presence in 
her courts. That is her natural history as it relates 
to man. But what man? Who is he that speaks to 
her and whom she answers? Is it man in his com- 
mon capacity and character, the ordinary man, man- 



220 WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 

as he has been for ages ? For him miracles do not 
happen. To him Nature replies in the same old 
sweet and solemn voices in which for ages she has 
spoken. But when a new man comes, a new man- 
hood, a divine man, his newness and divinity being 
attested for us not by his miracles, but by his 
character, then miracles do happen ; nay, more than 
that, it is altogether probable that miracles must 
happen, being the natural outflow of his life — being, 
we almost may say, no miracles for him — being 
as natural in the world of power where he lives as it 
is in our world that the echo should fly back from 
the mountain, or the seed we planted should come 
piercing through the soil. 

You must see Christ and the tomb, both of them, 
before it can seem possible that Lazarus will rise. 
Let any one take you where you will see the tomb 
only and not see Christ, and you will of course reject 
the thought of resurrection and declare it a supersti- 
tion or a fraud. You have got the task without the 
power, the load without the lifting-strength. Power 
and task make one great whole. They greet and 
answer to each other. Stand where you see Him, and 
miracle is not merely explained — it is demanded. 
He is miraculous, and miracle surrounds Him as the 
sunshine issues from the sun. 

The same is true of many of the questions of 
religion. Stand where you cannot see man's great- 
ness, and the incarnation seems a wild, inexplicable 
dream.. Stand where no music reaches you from the 
deep harmonies of man's present spiritual life, and 
it is out of your power to believe in lieaveno Lose 



WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 221 

sight of sin, and the darker possibilities of eternity 
are hideous impossibilities. The religious truth 
which you see by itself, out of its position in the 
great whole which ought to hold it, fails to bear 
witness of its truth. Strive then for wholes, and let 
the parts reveal themselves within them. Strive for 
God, who is the whole. Not immediately for particu- 
lar religious doctrines, but for that vast religious and 
divine conception of existence which shall make 
special religious doctrines credible. By obedience, 
by communion, climb to the height where 3^ou shall 
be with God, and then the truths about God shall 
open their reasonableness, their richness, and their 
harmony. So, I think, Jesus was religious. So may 
we be. 

I must do little more than allude to the one other 
application of our truth Avhich is in my mind ; but I 
must not let you go without alluding to it. It is the 
saddest and most terrible of all. I am thinking of 
the desperation and bitterness which come wdth the 
sight of pain without the sight of the higher conse- 
quences and results of pain. It is the old tragedy of 
the Book of Job, and of the books of thousands of 
tortured lives. ''Curse God and die," seems some- 
times to be the only outcome of it all. Perhaps, nay 
almost certainly, there are some to whom it seems so 
here this morning. It is the only outcome of it all, if 
the pain you feel or see is all. But if the whole of a 
man's life from its beginning to its endless end, from 
its surface in to its inmost heart, is capable of being 
taken into account, then that desperate outcome is 
not the only one. There is a blessing and a thank- 



222 WHOLE VIEWS OF LIFE. 

fulness which may overcome and drown the curse. 
Suppose that, looking at pain, and with the curse 
just growing into shape upon your lips, a great hand 
takes you up and lifts you. And as you rise your 
vision widens. And slowly education grows into 
your view, surrounding pain, and drawing out its 
sense of cruelty, and crowding in upon it its own 
sense of love and purpose. Then, in the larger 
vision, must not the curse perish ? And if the lips 
are not strong enough to open into thankfulness, at 
least the eyes, still full of pit}", ma}^ wait in peace. 

This is the fear we have to-day. The sense of 
human pain grows stronger all the time. And it 
sometimes seems as if the sense of purpose and edu- 
cation grew weaker in a multitude of souls. It is the 
heart of man taken, Balaam-like, to a place whence 
it can see the part and not the whole ; and who that 
listens does not hear the muttering of the curse ? 
Where is the help, first for your soul, then for the 
whole great world? Not in saying that pain is not 
pain, not in shutting the eyes to the part which is 
so awfully manifest, but in seeing, in insisting upon 
seeing, the whole. 

" To feel, although no tongue can prove, 
That every cloud that spreads above, 
And veileth love, itself is love." 

That is the only help. He who lets his heart bear 
witness, he who lets the experience of countless 
sufferers bear witness, he who lets Christ bear witness, 
that no suffering ever yet came to any human 
creature by which it was not possible that that human 



WHOLE YIE^yS OF LIFE. 223 

creature should be made better and purer and greater, 
— he has cauofht si^-ht of the whole ; and thousfh he 
walks in silence and perplexity and suspense, he does 
not curse. 

And so we come to this, — the sacredness and 
graciousness of the whole. He who sees the part, 
grows bitter. He who sees the whole, is full of hope. 
We curse the part, but not the whole. The reason 
must be that he who grasps the whole, touches God, 
and the human soul cannot really curse Him. The 
whole is sacred. It is more than the sum of its parts. 
It has its own quality and character. It is great and 
mysterious. In it is peace. He who sees it all finds 
rest unto his soul. He wdio catches glimpses of how 
he shall see it all some day has something of the 
power of that rest already. 

Remember I have not preached to j^ou blind satis^ 
faction and complacency. I have tried to press on 
you the old noble and ennobling exhortation, '' Lift 
up your eyes," see all you can. What you cannot 
see with your eyes, see with your faith. Then go 
through life not feebly scattering curses by the way, 
but bravely hopeful, strong in God whose being and 
love surround it all, blessing and being blessed, at 
every step and at the end. 



XIIL 
HIGHER AND LOWER STANDARDS. 

" Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this Present World." — 
II Timothy iv : 10. 

Of Demas we know almost nothing except what 
is suggested in these words. Once in the Epistle to 
the Colossians, and once in the Epistle to Philemon, 
St. Paul alludes to him as his own fellow-worker, in 
tones of sympathy and love. Then in the Epistle to 
Timothy there comes this statement of his follower's 
defection. 

With so few facts to restrain us, we may give some 
play to our imagination. We may ask ourselves why 
and how it was that Demas turned back from the 
company of Paul, and gave himself to '' this present 
world." It may have been mere lightness of nature, 
which grew weary of the severe and loft}^ life which 
the apostle lived. On the other hand, there may 
have been something more than that. Demas may 
certainly have been a man of some degree of serious- 
ness. I can think of him as being first drawn to 
Paul and Paul's Christ with real entiiusiasm. His 
heart was touched. His mind was fascinated. Lo! 
here was something greater than the ordinary life. 
Here was the true life of man. I can imagine him 
thinking that for a long time, and then I can imagine 
a misgiving creefjing in upon him. " After all," I 



HIGHER AND LOWER STANDARDS. 226 

can picture him saying to himself, " what is this life, 
of Paul, my master ? Is there any hope that he can 
make the world that which he thinks it ought to be ? 
Is he not striving for an impossibility? Is he not 
before his time ? Is he not so far apart from common 
standards that all his teaching and work must be 
only a powerless episode, out of which, when it is 
over, no permanent result can come? Will not the 
true, the healthy, the practical man rather seek the 
best standards of his time and live in them?" With 
thoughts like these, I can conceive this vague and 
shadowy Demas, by and by, perhaps with deep regret 
and courteous farewells, forsaking Paul, his master, 
''having loved this present w^orld." 

If any such picture of his history were true, should 
we not have in Demas a very interesting study of the 
comparative power of Higher and Lower Standards, 
and of their relation to one another ? We should see 
a man pressed on by the immediate conditions of his 
place and time urged to behave and live as his con- 
temporaries and his fellow-citizens were living and 
behaving; then tempted out beyond these immediate 
surroundings by the sight of vaster experiences and 
the more ideal possibilities of man ; and then again 
deliberately leaving and disowning these, and coming 
back and saying : '' No ! Beautiful as it is, it is a de- 
lusion. Man must live in his own place, and in his 
own time. The universal and the eternal must not 
bewilder him. He can identify and integrate his Hie 
only in the moulds of his own race, his own family, 
his own class. Let him find his standards there. 
Let the bird be the best bird, and the mole the best 



226 HIGHEK AND LOWEK STANDARDS. 

mole, that it can ; but let neither lose its distinctness 

and special yalne by aspiring after some vagne dream 
of universal animal life." This is what we should see 
in Demas if our imagination concerning him were 
right. And so we should understand the scene when 
on some dim and hazy morning he turned his back on 
Paul, and went back to the " present world ^' wliich 
he loved. 

Was there ever a restlessness in his soul after- 
wards? Did the heaven which he once had dared to 
seek haunt him in his low^er life ? We are almost 
sure it must have haunted him, for not by any one 
resolution does a man shut the windows on the 
higher standards which once have shone upon him. 
He cannot so look to earth that he will not be aware 
of the heaven, any more than he can so fix his eyes 
on the heaven that he will not know there is an 
earth. An old mediaeval legend says that mankind 
are the incorporation, the embodiments, of the angels 
who in the strife between God and Lucifer could 
not determine on which side they ought to be. They 
never have finally decided. And so this special 
fallen angel Demas may, as well as any other man, 
give us the starting-point from which to think about 
the true relation of the higher and the lower, the 
universal and the special, standards to the life of 
man. That is what I should like to do this morn- 
ing. 

Let us start, then, with the fact that every human 
being is born into a group of local, ready-made stand- 
ards, to which, in the absence of any broader and 
more absolute ideas of life, he naturally and legiti- 



HIGHER AND LOWER STANDARDS. 227 

mately conforms. The child takes it for granted 
that what his father and his niotlier do is right. 
The ways of the household represent for him the 
perfect life. As he goes forth from the house door 
into the school, into the city life, into the Church's 
teaching, it is all right for him that each of them 
should welcome him into a set of standards all formed 
and accepted, which should be presumably the best. 
He does not know enough to question them. The 
presumption is enormously upon their side. The 
very fact of his being born into the midst of them 
implies a certain kind of evidence that he brings 
such a nature as will be best suited to them, and 
such as they will best suit. They represent the same 
stage in the development of man. And so the child 
in the household, and the scholar in the school, and 
the^ citizen in the State, and the Christian in the 
Church, starts with a cordial acceptance of the local 
standard, and desires to live as other men are liv- 
ing in the institution of which he finds himself a 
part. 

In a yet larger way, the same is true about the age 
in which a man finds himself set. I am here in the 
nineteenth centurj^, and I am presumably in its 
spirit, and think it the best centurj^ which the world 
has seen. The same causes have produced it and 
me and the men who are living in it at my side. I 
see its light; I feel its nobleness. Other centuries 
I must go abroad to seek. This century is here. 1 
breathe its breath ; its blood is in my veins ; its 
passions are my passions ; its ideas are my ideas. 
And so presumptively, and by the first natural dis- 



228 HTGHEll AND LOWEK STANDARDS. 

position of my life, I am a man of my time and 
adopt its standards. 

This is not something which applies only to weak 
and w^axen characters, such as easily take the im- 
pression of their immediate surroundings. Great 
genius all the more vividly catches the color of its 
time. Plato is a man of all time, but he is also a 
man of the fourth century before Christ. Luther 
is a German of the sixteenth century. Shakespeare 
is part of the age of Elizabeth. Nay, if we come 
to that Life of which it might have been expected 
above all others that it would leave all local and 
temporary influences and associations on one side, 
and be simply and universally the life of the Son 
of Man, Christ Jesus was a Jew ; He was a Naz- 
arene ; He spoke the language. He thought tlie 
thought, of His own people ; He reverenced the 
authority of the Scribes and Pharisees ; He justified 
Himself out of the Jewish law. It was not merely 
a humanity, but a Hebrew humanity of that especial 
age, through which He uttered the wisdom and the 
love of God. 

Influences are powerful, not merely in virtue of 
their intrinsic force, but also in proportion to their 
nearness or their distance. An idea which ever, 
in any remotest age, has held the thought of men 
is powerful forever in the world ; but an idea of far 
less intrinsic force prevailing here and now will con- 
quer it, and sweep the life of the world out of its 
power. A man in college knows that the stand- 
ards of the great world of men are wiser, loftier, and 
freer than those which are the masters in his little 



HIGHER AND LOWER STANDARDS. 229 

world ; but the immediate holds him in its power, and 
he thinks that he is helpless. It is in vain to argue 
with this first ]^ower of the present life. That a 
man should feel it, is the first condition of successful 
energy. Now and then a man comes who does not 
feel it, or who pretends not to feel it. " I will not 
be an American of the nineteenth century," he says. 
" I will be a Greek of the time of Pericles. I Avill 
be a Jew of the time of Moses. I will be a bar- 
barian of the forest, or an Arab of the desert." 
And what is the result ? How he becomes useless 
and insignificant and good for nothing ! The great 
age takes no notice of the foreign particle. He 
adds nothing to its force. He shares nothing of its 
glory. 

Be men of your time. Let no perverseness and 
no affectation isolate you from it. There is the man 
behind his time, and the man before his time ; and 
the time gains something from them both, but 
neither of them makes a true part of its vital 
strength. There is the other man whom we all 
know, who stands with the very genius of his time 
inspiring his life. He will stand always in history, 
to show w^hat the special humanity of this particular 
period was. *And now the age for which he stands 
is more real for his characteristic life, and does its real 
work, in this brief day of his existence, by him and 
such as he ; and he himself is real and strong and 
solid by this identification w^ith his time. 

We say all this with confidence, and then there 
come misgivings. After all, will not all this make 
a limited and meagre life ? Shall I, because I happen 



230 HIGHER AND LOWER STANDARDS. 

to have been born in this especial century, or because 
I live in this especial land, or because I am a mem- 
ber of this especial class in college, accept the 
standards of my time, my place, my class, and ask 
no larger questions? I cannot, if I am a man. It 
cannot be that it is right that I should do so. It can- 
not be that I am doomed to bigotry because I live 
in one place or time, or to scepticism if I live in 
another. " That would make me a puny slave, and 
make all progress of the world impossible." So men 
reason, and they reason well. Sometimes they act 
upon their reasoning very badly. Sometimes the 
only thing which they can see to do is to throw them- 
selves violently outside their local temporary stand- 
ards and live in pure defiance of the state of things 
about them, which is nothing but another kind of 
slavery. 

There is a better way. There is a calm, deliberate 
search for other standards, which shall not destroy, 
but ripen and enlarge, the standards to which we are 
immediately committed. There is a way in which, 
still clinging to our time and place, we may fulfil 
their influence upon us by more general and more 
personal influence, so that they shall not hold us in 
slavery and cramp us, but be the starting-point 
for larger range and deeper depth. Let us see what 
such other standards are. In general, I think that 
they are two, which we may call : 

First, The universal human experience ; and 

Second. The personal conscience. 

Let us look at both. 

First. What do we mean, then, by the universal 



HIGHER AND LOWER STANDARDS. 231 

human experience as an enlargement of the stand- 
ards of our time or place ? Why, this ! Here you 
and all the people about you are living in a certain 
fashion. You were born into its ways of living, and 
have followed it ever since you were a child. You 
have never seen any other. The consequence is, 
you have come to think of it as if it were intrin- 
sically the best way, almost as if it were the only 
way. You have practically come to feel as if a man 
could not be clean and upright and intelligent and 
a gentleman and live in any other way. Now sup- 
pose your range of vision widens, suppose jou come 
to see that there are hosts of men who are true, 
honest, pure, and fine who never heard of your pet 
ways of living. Suppose the curtain of history is 
lifted, and you see that whole generations wrought 
out strong, healthy human lives thinking things 
wrong which you think right, thinking things riglit 
which you think wrong. What is the result? You 
do not cast your standards instantly away, but you 
revise them. Their tyranny, their absoluteness, is 
mitigated. You say, *' They may not be right." 
You have stepped forth into the presence of the 
great humanity. 

Take your religious opinions. They are heterodox 
or orthodox, but they are absolute to you because 
they are the opinions of your place and time. You 
have so thoroughlj^ so totally, accepted them that 
you with greatest difficulty are able to believe that 
any man is a good man and a true man who believes 
that which you disbelieve, or disbelieves that which 
you hold true. But lo, across the ocean, if not 



232 HIGHER AND LOWEK STANDARDS. 

nearer, there are men who find what you believe all 
unbelievable, and there are men who hold what is to 
you incredible, with all their hearts, who jet are 
altogether brave and spiritual and devout. What 
shall that mean to you? It must not make you 
think al truth indifferent. It must not give you 
into the power of the silly idea that it matters not 
what a man believes. It must not make me doubt 
my truth, but it must make me hold my truth more 
largely, and be sure that there are other aspects of 
it which may make good and strong men. It must 
make me know the larger relations of charity and 
faith. 

Thus every conviction and conception, when it is 
taken out into the broad air of human life, grows 
clearer and grows truer. " I know this because men 
know it," I declare. "I am sure of it because men 
are sure of it." But what men? Why, first of all, 
these sharp, clear men whom I meet every day, these 
men who must of necessity immediately represent 
humanity to me. But what about those other men 
who lived ten centuries ago? What about these 
other men who live to-day in China or Paris ? Shall 
they have nothing to say in forming my opinion? If 
I take any conception of my own and travel far up 
along the stream of history, and there in the far-away 
thickets v/here the stream is very small find men 
holding the same thing to be true ; or if I sail with 
it across the ocean, and find men of other colors and 
other tongues believing it and living by it, — is not my 
faith in it confirmed ? Is not the local temporary stand- 
ard strengthened when the standards of all time and 



HIGHER AND LOWER STANDARDS. 233 

all the world gather around it and agree with it? 
Must it not also be that the local and temporary 
standards are regulated and enlarged when the stand- 
ards of other times and of the whole world show 
that they are not in accordance with the great and 
deliberate and long-continued movements of the 
human mind and soul? 

Seciirus judicat orbis terrarum. The judgments of 
the world are right. What a great power that prin- 
ciple has always had over the minds of men ! It 
really is at the heart of all appeals to the judgment- 
seats of the past or the future. It is the principle 
which, consecrated, builds the Church. Under the 
power of this principle the standard of the time, the 
sect, the set, the land, is always being drawn out for 
refreshment and for enlargement and for rectification 
into the long and broad standards of humanity. A boy 
gets to believe, from tlie society he lives among, that 
all bright men despise religion. He happens to live 
in a little narrow, local, temporary set, where clever 
wits are sneering at the supreme divine relations of 
the soul. He is all ready to fix it as one of the first 
conditions of his thought, that one must be either 
foolish or blind to say that he believes in God. Let 
that poor boy's horizon be enlarged. Let him see 
ages filled with the glory of religion. Let him be- 
hold multitudes of the world's noblest souls finding 
their highest nobleness in obedience to an acknowl- 
edged God, and is he not set free ? Is he not set at 
liberty to search and find out for himself the larger 
spiritual life of man ? A certain sin is current in a 
certain land. The exact point of development which 



234 HIGHER AND LOWEK STANDARDS. 

that land has reached tends to make that sin seem ex- 
cusable, perhaps almost to make it seem necessary A 
man, full of the sympathy of his time and ready to ac- 
cept its standards, travels to other lands ; and lo, what- 
ever other sins are tolerated there, this sin is counted 
a disgrace. Men turn away from him who trans- 
gresses in this special fashion with contempt or dis- 
gust. Is not the traveller's spell broken ? Does 
he not go back to his own land with the standards 
which it has inspired set right and made large by 
what the world has shown him? These are illus- 
trations of what I mean by the power over local and 
temporary standards of the universal experience of 
humanity. 

Second, I said that also the local and temporary 
standard was subject to enlargement and correction 
by the personal conscience. At first the group of 
which a human being makes a part — the family, the 
school, the age — overcomes and conceals his self. It 
almost is his self. But the true self is there all the 
Avhile. This is a human being, different from all the 
other beings that have ever lived or are living on 
the earth to-day. What is the result of that? Some 
day some decision which the family, the school, the 
church has made is so important or so strange that it 
breaks through the outer crust of life, and finds this 
true self, this personal self, down below and wakens 
it. And, once awake, it never goes absolutely to 
sleep again. The man's own sense Oi right and 
w^rong, of wise and foolish, utters its commendations 
or its condemnations on the standards of the time or 
of the place ; and just in proportion to the true per- 



HIGHEK AND LOWER STANDARDS. 235 

sonalness with which he speaks, his utterances are 
more large and absolute. 

For it is true that every real man is more eternal 
and more universal than his time and place. Every 
real man is fresh from the creative hand of God. 
He has not come doT\jii simply through the genera- 
tions. He is the son of Him who was, and is, and is 
to be. Therefore those standards, which have in 
them the limitations of the time and place where 
they were born, come to him for their judgment. 
They are the utterances of the convictions of all 
men. And there is a true sense in which every real 
man is wiser, as there is another sense in which he is 
more foolish, than his race. At any rate, he is re- 
sponsible for his own life. His conscience claims 
this freedom and makes of it a duty. " What is this 
world that I should take its judgments absolutely? 
Behold, my time says that this is right, but I, the 
heart of me, the conscience of me, know that it is 
wrong. What is the age but multitudes of Me's ? 
Shall not this Me have its own rights which it can- 
not surrender?'' And so the personal conscience 
revises and enlarges and corrects the standards which 
the time and place have formed. 

The illustrations which I used before might serve 
us perfectly again. The boy, all ready to be overcome 
by the flippant and scornful scepticism of his time, 
hears the remonstrance which comes not merely from 
the utmost bounds of human life, but also up from the 
depths of his own soul. The doer of the accepted sin 
of the day does it in the face not merely of a rebuking 
humanity, but also of his own nature, which knows and 



236 HIGHER AND LOWER STANDARDS. 

says that it is wrong. Thus the heart of a man, which 
is eternal, is always asserting the eternal standards, and 
so intensively as well as extensively, in the depth of 
his personal conscience as well as in the breadth of his 
share in the universal manhood, he is finding the cor- 
rection and enlargement of the standards of his life. 

Let us see, then, what we have reached. Here is a 
certain man, —-you, we will say, living your daily 
life. Where will the standards of that life come 
from? First of all out of your surroundings. You 
will do what your household, your class, your time, 
your place think right. But on these standards will 
be always pressing the claims of the general human 
judgments, what men in other times and in other 
places have thought and are thinking to be right, and 
the claims of your own conscience, that which God has 
shown you to be right in your own soul. The result 
will be a character of your own time, of your own 
place, and yet of all times and of all places, or rather 
of that universal being which underlies all times and 
all places and manifests itself in each, but loses itself 
in and becomes the slave of none. 

May I just suggest one or two simple illustrations 
which will make more clear and less abstract what I 
have been saying. Suppose a young man born in a 
certain region of society has adopted a certain scale of 
personal expense without a question. He is rich, and 
all his friends are rich, and luxury is in the very air 
they breathe. He really thinks that a man cannot 
live comfortably on less than he spends every year. 
Is he to be all his life a slave of those delusions just 
because he was born in a particular street and of a 



HIGHER AND LOWER STANDARDS. 237 

special class ? The things which must save him must 
be the widest sight of how the noblest men on earth 
are living to-day on not more than a tenth of w^hat he 
thinks necessary, and of how luxury has been in ages 
the curse of human life, and the protest of his own 
conscience that wanton extravagance in a world 
w^here men and women are starving is a sin and 
shame. 

Here is a community where everybody drinks. 
You live in it, and you drink too. Why should you 
not? What call or right have you to set yourself up 
for an exception ? None, if you get your standard 
wholly from your time ; but surely reason enough, if 
all the world and all the ages speak to you and tell you 
how the curse of drink is at the root of a large part of 
human misery, and that the earth would almost burst 
to blossom if the blight of drunkenness were taken 
off. Reason enough, if your own conscience speaks 
to you and tells you that you have no right to degrade 
your own nature from its best activity, or to put one 
grain more of temptation in the way of your hindered 
and burdened fellow-men. 

There are groups of men, at least, who see no harm 
in gambling. Has any man a right to shut his life 
into the standards of those groups and give no value 
to the fact that the great mass of civilized mankind 
has thoroughly believed and proclaimed that for a 
man to come into possession of the property of his fel- 
low-man by a process which is neither bargain nor 
gift, but the mere working of accident and chance 
is demoralizing and wrong ? Has any man a right to 
let his soul be deafened to its own instincts, which tell 



238 HIGHER AND LOWER STANDARDS. 

it that for a man to gain money so is wicked? Here 
is where the breaking of the spell must come. Men 
in all ages have doubted or denounced the gambler's 
life. The gambler's own conscience, if he sets it free, 
denounces it. Before the universal human experi- 
ence and the personal conscience, the standard of 
the gaming-house finds itself corrected and rebuked. 

I will not multiply illustrations. Do you not see 
how they all point the same way, how they all tend 
to urge the same kind of life, — a life profoundly 
rooted in the here and now, a life that is in quick and 
earnest sympathy with what is close about it, a life 
that altogether is disposed to think its own time and 
its standards right, and yet a life which is always look- 
ing wider and looking deeper, — wider to the universal 
experience of man, deeper to the personal conscience 
which it carries in itself ? 

I appeal to you whether what I have described is 
not the character, the kind of man, whom the com- 
munity most trusts and honors, on whom it most 
learns to depend. The servant of the hour, but not 
its slave ; in sympathy with the day, the place, the 
business, the party, the circle of society in which it 
stands, but not in blind subserviency to it; ready 
to protest and having a recognized right to protest 
because of an undoubted sympathy and love ; always 
bringing in new elements and forms of nobleness 
out of the fields of history, and up from the depths 
of its own nature, — is not this the character of 
the man of his own age, the man of his own class, 
who makes the whole world and all time more rich? 
Is not this the timely and yet universal man whom 



HIGHER AND LOWER STANDARDS. 239 

it may well stir the ambition of any young man to 
become? 

I know but one step more to make, and that, while 
it need not take us long to describe it, is a great step, 
for it brings all our subject out into the rich land of 
religion. We talk about getting into association 
with the universal human experience, and about 
listeniDg to one's own conscience, and then some one 
starts up and says, " Ah, yes, that is all well, but 
what am I to do ? I, who am no scholar, who can be 
no traveller, and who, wdien I listen for my con- 
science, hear only a turmoil of doubts and perplex- 
ities all in confusion down below." When I hear 
questions such as that my thought goes back to Jesus, 
and the question which the people asked one another 
about Him, "Howknoweth this man letters, having 
never learned," seems to throw light upon it all. He 
was no scholar. They had never seen Him in their 
schools. Bat He knew man and knew Himself, and 
by and by they learned that it was because He knew 
God. 

What does that mean for us ? That if we know 
God, if we are forever trying to find out what is His 
will, if we are seeking for it in the Bible, if w^e are 
seeking for it in Christ, we find in knowing Him the 
true enlargement and corrections of the present 
standards ; we find, in knowing Him, the revelation 
of the universal experience of man and the awaken- 
ing of the personal conscience. 

How true that is ! In every man of God there is a 
breadth and depth which makes him free of the world 
in which he yet most intimately lives. In God there 



240 HIGHER AND LOWER STANDARDS. 

is the universal man and the true life of every indi- 
vidual child of His. Therefore, whoever loves and 
serves Him finds in Him the constant enlargement 
and adjustment of his life. Demas need not leave 
Paul and PauFs Christ in order that he may love 
this present world. He will know how to love and 
serve this present world all the more completely if 
he knows Christ and the great Revelation of God 
which is in him. 

Oh if I only could make you young men see how 
there is here the true solution of the problem of your 
lives ! Shall you be God's or the world's ? Be both I 
Not in any low miserable compromise. Not by the 
effort to serve God and mammon. But by a brave and 
filial questioning of God that He may tell you just 
how He wants a child of His to live in this peculiar 
time and under these peculiar circumstances of yours. 
There is a type of universal human life in harmony 
with the best life of all the ages. In tune with the 
sublimest and finest spiritual music of the universe, 
in harmony also with the profoundest dictates of your 
own personal conscience, which you can live in your 
parlor and your shop ; and that life you can reach if 
3^ou are consecrated to God in your own place and 
time. If 3^ou live that life, the world of the present 
owns you and claims you and rejoices in you. The 
most distant life of man looks in on you and recog- 
nizes you as a part of itself, and says, '' Well done ! " 
Up from your own conscience speaks your self- 
approval. And God your Father bends His lovo 
around you, and out of His blessing feeds you with 
His strength. 



HIGHER AND LOWEH STANDARDS. 241 

Compared with such a life, what miserable things 
are these feverish efforts either to suit the present 
world or to reject it and rebel against it. Either 
Demas strolling once more in the streets of The. ; 
lonica with his sight of divine things faded from 'l . 
like a dream, or some poor starved hermit sitting in 
his cave and trying to think that he despises that life 
to which his human heart still tells him that he 
belongs. How miserable are they both beside the 
life which goes like Christ's, from duty on to duty, 
from experience to experience, heartily in them all, 
and yet above, beyond them all, in hourly commun- 
ion with God, with the complete humanity, and with 
Himself. 

May we so live ! May we be men here, now, and 
yet men there and then ; in the infinite, in the 
eternal, while yet the duties of the present world are 
claiming us, and we are doing them with hands made 
faithful and skilful by the fire of God 1 



XIV. 
THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 

Howbeit that was not first which is Spiritual, but that which is 
Natural ; and afterward that which is Spiritual. — I. Cor. xv. 4G. 

" The Adam comes before the Christ,'' St. Paul 
declares. And he is simply telling the story of the 
Bible. The man of the Garden, untrained, undisci- 
plined, self-indulgent, incapable of self-control, comes 
before the Man of the Cross, who willingly surrenders 
the present for the future, the body for the soul, and 
Himself for others. And the earthly life comes be- 
fore the life of heaven. The life of temptation, and 
resistance, and surrender comes before the life of 
spontaneity, and freedom, and attainment ! 

These are St. Paul's two great examples ; and then 
he seems to gather out of them the wide and general 
truth which they contain. He surveys the universe 
and finds the same truth everywhere. Everywhere the 
higher comes to make the lower perfect. Everywhere 
the lower is provided first, to be the basis and oppor- 
tunity of the higher coming by and by. Everywhere 
the lips must be before the speech ; the canvas must 
be before the picture ; the candle must be before the 
flame ; the brain must be before the thought. It is 
the teaching which natural science is giving us pro- 
fusely. She traces the long progress in which the 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 243 

material, at first hard and sterile, has grown fertile 
with mysterious emanation and clothed itself with 
higher and higher life. From the coarser to tlie 
finer she watches the growth of the ever-ripening 
world. Her message is the same as Paul's : " That 
is not first which is Spiritual, but that wliich is Natu- 
ral ; and afterward that wliicli is Spiritual." 

The first suggestion whicli would come from such 
a truth is very crude and unsatisfactory. It is that 
the natural is helpless until the spiritual comes to 
help it. Let the Adam go on in his mere physical 
manhood till the Christ appears. Let the mortal 
live its lower life until death opens to it the doors 
of immortality. The material must lie in its tor- 
pidity until the spiritual form without itself comes 
and puts into it a life of which it was all destitute 
before. But our deeper observation teaches us a 
deeper truth, and the Bible asserts that deeper truth 
convincingly. The material has within itself the 
power of spiritual life. Its total story has not been 
told until a waiting impulse has been felt within it 
dimly conscious of incompleteness, until it has an- 
swered to the spiritual call and roused itself to life. 
The lips are not complete lips till they have spoken ; 
the brain is not a whole brain till it has thought. 
So in the Bible the first Adam is full of blind reach- 
ings and desires, which the second Adam alone ful- 
fils. The Life of man here upon the earth is capable 
of a heavenliness which heaven alone can bring to its 
completeness. The whole secret of the physical has 
not been read until its power of becoming spiritual 
by service pf the spirit has been discerned. This is 



244 THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 

what Baptism means. It is the declaration that this 
new-born life, which seems only a new-born animal, 
has in it, bound up with it, a divine nature. Bap- 
tism is the claiming of that nature. It is the asser- 
tion of the regeneration, the deeper and higher birth, 
the birth, from heaven which is coincident with the 
birth from earth, and which is to use the physical 
basis for its servant and its power of development. 

I hope that I make this plain, for it seems to me to 
be all-important. A man sees the great world of 
spiritual life. He believes in God and godlikeness. 
He thinks of genius and of sainthood. He knows 
that there are such things as great self-sacrifices and 
surrenders. He knows of this spiritual world, but 
he also thoroughly believes that he does not belong 
to it. He is of the earth, earthy. He is physical, 
material, limited to the interests and needs and ex- 
periences of the lower world. " Sometime, perhaps 
at death," he says, " the Power may come which will 
snatch me up and carry me away and put me in 
another world, in which now I have no share. But 
now that other world is to me as if it did not exist. 
I have nothing to do with it, or it with me. I am 
a creature of the earth, and must live on as such 
until God perhaps in His own good time carries me 
to heaven." 

Is not that the simple creed about themselves by 
which multitudes of men are practically living ? It 
is in protest against that creed that we are bound, 
with St. Paul for our teacher, to try to understand 
the true relation between the lower and the higher 
lives, between the natural and the spiritual as he 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 245 

describes them. That is what I want to do this 
morning. 

The truth from which we start is this, that so far 
as the life of this world is concerned, every spiritual 
operation has its physical basis, in close connection 
with which it lives its life and does its work. 'J'lie 
illustrations of that truth are everywhere. Tlie 
growth of the tree is a mysterious and spiritual 
power. No man has ever seen it. It cannot be 
detected at its labor when with a sudden stroke of 
the axe you tear the tree's trunk open. You are not 
quick enough to find it. Your sight is not keen 
enough to catch it. And yet how closely, how in- 
extricably it is bound up with the grosser elements, 
in connection with which alone it does its work. 
There must be the black earth and the brown seed, 
or nothing comes. What growth-power ever made 
manifestation of itself, creating out of nothing, in 
the air, a tree that had no history and no progenitor? 
The material is first, and then the spiritual. Or if we 
look in quite a different direction — the character of 
a nation, its advance in cultivation, and in the pro- 
duction of that special type of national being which 
constitutes its spiritual power, and makes it a real 
presence, not merely on the map, but among the 
spiritual forces of the world — this has its phj^sical 
basis. The soil and situation of the country where 
that nation lives, the amount and kind of its material 
prosperity, these are the first elements which tell in 
the production of the nation's life, and in deciding 
of what sort its most spiritual productions are to be. 
The songs of its singers and the raptures of its saints 



246 THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 

will get their tone from tlie mountains from which 
they are echoed, or from the waters across wliich tliey 
float. And need I even suggest to you how every 
man has in Iiis bodily constitution the physical basis 
of the most subtle and transcendent parts of his pro- 
foundest life? Out from the very marrow of his 
bones comes something which his finest affections 
never outgo, and which gives a color to his soul's 
loftiest visions. His dreams are different from other 
men's because of the texture of his muscles and the 
color of his blood. It is on the harp of his nervous 
system that tlie Psalm of his life is plaj^ed. There is 
a phj^sical correspondent to everything that he thinks 
or fancies. There is a physical basis to his most 
spiritual life. 

In the story of man's creation in the Book of Gene- 
sis, a story which, whatever be its relation to history, 
contains the Ideas of Human Life most picturesquely 
and graphically set forth, this truth of the physical 
basis for the spiritual life appears most vividly. 
" The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground 
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and 
man became a living soul." The scene is almost 
visible before us. We can almost see the clay-cold 
figure laid upon the ground, the corpse which never 
yet has lived; we can almost feel, that which we can- 
not see, the awful presence bending above the perfect 
body and sending through all its limbs and organs 
the mysterious thrill of life. Each limb and organ is 
ready for the power which occupies it. Each has 
within itself the unused fitness for its special work. 
The Breath of Life finds each responsive to its sum- 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIHITUAL. 247 

mons, ''And man becomes a living soul!" How 
true it is to all we know I The Perfect Body offering 
itself for the medium of the Perfect Soul. I do not 
know, I cannot guess, what was the nature of the 
historical event to which that verse refers. But I do 
know that it is absolutely true to that great order 
which pervades the universe. Everywhere the earthly 
conditions offer their opportunities to the celestial 
miracle. The fuel is cut in the woods of earth ; it 
is piled, hard and lifeless, on the altar of unheeding 
stone, and then from it the flame arises a live aspir- 
ing column and lays its fiery tribute at the feet of 
God. "' That is not first which is spiritual, but that 
which is natural ; and afterward that which is spir- 
itual." 

There are two truths here, then. The first is that 
every lower life is made to reach up and fulfil itself 
in a higher, and the second is that every higher life 
must have its basis and find its conditions in a lower. 
Let us look at these truths in turn, and see if they 
are not both rich in practical suggestion. 

1. Every lower life is made to reach up and fulfil 
itself in a higher. I do not know anything which 
furnishes- more food for thought than the perplexity 
with which men talk about the care of their human 
bodies. Is it a noble or ignoble thing ? One genera- 
tion devotes itself to athletic culture as if there were 
no loftier religion; another generation despises ex- 
ercise, and goes limping and coughing among the 
groves of its academy as if to care for health 
or sickness were unworthy of a thinking man. A 
thousand theories cross and recross one another as 



248 THE NATURAL AND THE SPIKITUAL. 

they lie tumbled in upon each other in chaotic con- 
fusion. Would it not be good, indeed, if tliese words 
should be written in golden letters on the walls of 
every gymnasium and also on the walls of every 
school of learning and cell of meditation in the world: 
''That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is 
natural." As they stood on the walls of the gym- 
nasium, what they declared would be the need of a 
strong body for all best spiritual life. As they stood 
written on the study wall, they would mean the 
utier failure of the strongest body unless a spiritual 
life came down from above and occupied it, came out 
from within and clothed it with a worthy purpose. 
There are two young men who walk our streets, both 
of whom have their admirers, each of whom seems in 
some eyes to be an admirable fulfilment of humanity, 
both of whom, judged with the fullest judgment, are 
pitiable failures. One of them is the young student 
who has burnt out the strength of his body in his 
midnight oil. The other is the young athlete who 
has given away to muscle the care and culture which 
was meant for mind. The staggering scholar and 
the stupid athlete, what failures they both are ! what 
sad and helpless fragments of humanity ! The Body 
trained as thoroughly, as superbly as may be for the 
spirit uses. Health gathered like a great reservoir 
of waters to be set free and turn the wheels of high 
thoughts, and generous emotions, and benignant chari- 
ties, — there is the true relationship, there is the per- 
fect man, there is the balance and proportion which 
is written in the noble maxim of St. Paul. 

What is the strongest thing to say to a poor young 



THE NATUPwAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 249 

fool who is wasting his bodily strength in dissipation ? 
Tell him about an early grave, and what does he care ? 
He talks his easy philosophy about ''Let us live 
while we live." Scare him with threats of physical 
reaction and decay, and he buries his face in the 
wine-cup and dreams of suicide. But so long as there 
is any spark of nobleness left in him, it must be that 
there is a chance that the picture of an intellect weak- 
ened, and a moral sense dimmed, and a soul made 
unfit for any high enterprise by the insufficiency of 
the physical basis, out of which their efforts must take 
their start and spring, will waken him and make him 
think. 

Do you know, O young men, that there are old 
men all through this city whose minds are powerless 
for any public work or private pleasure because of the 
wrong they did their bodies when they were of your 
age ? Do honor to your bodies. Reverence your 
physical natures, not simply for themselves. Only as 
ends they are not worthy of it, but because in health 
and strength lies the true basis of noble thoughts and 
glorious devotion. A man thinks well and loves well 
and prays well because of the red running of his 
blood. A community will have higher tastes and 
better government and less sordidness and less crime 
when its alleys and tenement-houses are no longer 
breeding-places of cholera and fever. We build our 
schools and our hospitals, and we keep them apart 
from one another as if they had no true connection. 
Only when in our thought they make one single 
system, — and health for the sake of intelligence 
and character is what we seek, — only then shall we 



250 THE NATURAL AND THE SPIKITUAL. 

be sure that we are serving and saving the whole 
man. 

There is a health of the Community which corre- 
sponds to the health of the physical body and shares in 
many of its laws. It is what is called in general Ma- 
terial Prosperity. It has its failures and recoveries, 
its fevers and its paralyses, its full-blooded vitality and 
its white-faced decline. What shall we say about the 
Material Prosperity of a Community ? Sometimes 
it is depreciated and defamed. Sometimes we are 
told that all the building of houses and laying out 
of roads and increase of the comforts and conven- 
iences of life is base and has no true connection with 
the higher life of man. All that is foolish. The con- 
nection between the low^er and the higher is a certain 
fact, and cannot be ignored. And 3^et the whole way 
in which men have asserted and denied that connec- 
tion is most significant and well deserves our study. 
Man's treatment of wealth has been one of the strang- 
est indications of his mental and spiritual condition. 
Think what it has been. He has denounced wealth in 
all his most exalted moods. He has mused and de- 
claimed upon its worthlessness. And 3^etit has been 
the passion of his life to get it, and to get it more and 
more. Let the moralist stand at the corner of the 
street and tell men as they pass that money will not 
bring happiness, and every man who passes will pause 
just long enough to nod to the sermon a melancholy 
assent, and then the whole river of human life will 
pour on to take possession of the last newly opened 
field of profitable investment and make a little more 
money. Let the satirist utter his stinging denuncia- 



THE NATUKAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 251 

tioii of the way in which men pursue that which they 
despise, and despise that which they pursue. Let all 
men say in certain moods that money-getting is a 
snare ; nevertheless the pursuit goes on, and in spite 
of their contempt of wealth-seeking, the mass of men 
spend their nights in dreaming and their days in 
working for the universally desired prize of wealth. 

Have we ever carefully asked ourselves what all 
this means, — this practical assertion that wealth is 
good, running along with the theoretical assertion 
that the pursuit of wealth is bad ? If we do ask our- 
selves what it all means, are we not led immediately 
to this, that it is exactly the state of things which 
would be brought about if some power which ought 
to develop into high and fine results were constantly 
pursued, without the demand for such development 
being forced upon it ; a restlessness which yet should 
never be strong enough to shake the pursuer free 
from his pursuit ; a search and struggle which should 
never grow complacently sure of itself and its own 
justification ; a spasmodic shame, a constantly re- 
curring misgiving and yet a constant pressing for- 
ward in the dubious way? This would be the 
inevitable consequence of such an unsatisfactory 
condition. 

I take just this to be exactly the state of things 
concerning the pursuit of money among men There 
is a wide and deep conviction that material well-being 
may be tbe basis of fine character and noble life. A 
rich man has opportunities of goodness which a poor 
man does not have. Self-culture and the care for 
others lie open to him in his opulent and well-pro- 



252 THE NATUKAL AND THE SPIKITUAL. 

vided home. The gettmg of wealth and the using 
of wealth both open the chance for the cultivation of 
precious qualities. Therefore no baseness of the 
actual business world has ever led men's soundest 
thought to condemn money-getting universally and 
in unsparing terms. On the other hand, the search 
for wealth has evidently not been always or generally 
conscious of its possibilities and responsibilities. It 
has been sordid and selfish. It has not always or 
generally produced refinement or charity. It has 
rested contented in its immediate results. It has 
vulgarly jingled its dollars and not won from them 
the true gold of character. 

Does not all that suggest what the true issue of it 
all must be? Not by abusing money-getting, but by 
insisting that money-getting must have ends beyond 
itself. Not by calling wealth wicked^ but by calling 
wicked the selfish, the licentious, the oppressive use 
of wealth. Not by trying to make all men poor, but by 
demanding of rich men that they shall be fine, broad, 
helpful, in proportion to their riches. So must the 
problem of wealth be ultimately solved. None but a 
theorizer or a dreamer pictures to himself the time 
when either the craving for large personal property 
will be eradicated from men's souls, or when by arti- 
ficial legislation it will become impossible for any man 
in the community to accumulate great riches. But 
it is not absurd to hope ; sometimes we see already 
glimpses and promises that it may come. It is not 
absurd to hope for the growth of a private conscience 
and a public sentiment which shall some day de- 
nounce and discredit the rich man who, in his riches 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 253 

keeps a vulgar soul or a stingy hand. The tree must 
bear its fruit, or else it is a cumberer of the ground. 
The fountain must not turn into a pool. " That is not 
first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; 
and afterward that which is spiritual." The natural 
is all right and good if it is reaching toward the 
spiritual ; but the natural, the material which desires 
and promises no spiritual result, is failure and deserves 
contempt. That is the application of our truth to 
personal or national well-being and success. 

What is true of wealth is true of all the manifold 
experiences of life. Experiences are the material of 
Character, the physical basis of feeling and thought. 
Something happens to you, and you thereby enter 
into the possibility of a higher and completer nature. 
The man of many experiences has the opportunity 
of being a man of manifold life. But yet, as we all 
know, as we all see, the opening of experiences into 
character is by no means a necessary or inevitable 
thing. What shall we say about the man who has 
gone up and down the world, had part in a vast 
variety of occupations, crossed many seas, climbed 
many mountains, walked the streets of many cities, 
talked with a thousand men, been tossed hither and 
thither on the distracting billows of all kinds of life, 
and yet is, after all, the same meagre, narrow, unsym- 
pathetic, unrefined mortal which he was at the be- 
ginning? His History is nothing but a Diary. He 
himself is only like a much-travelled log. What can 
Ave say except that, in him, experience has failed of 
its result. It has not opened into Character. The 
man has gathered nothing but recollections. He is 



254 THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 

no more a man. He has gathered no strength. The 
Natural has never come into the Spiritual. 

You see the difference whenever you talk with 
two men who have come home from their tour in 
Europe, or who have passed through great suffering 
and sorrow, or who are nearing the shore which lies 
the other side of life. You know at once which of 
them has transmuted experiences into intelligence 
and character, and which of them brings his experi- 
eiices like so maiiy hard jewels held in his hand, his 
treasure, but in no sense a part of him. The first 
man might forget everything which has happened to 
him, and all that happened to him would still remain 
in its essential power in his life. If the other man 
forgot the facts of his life, there would be nothing 
left. He might as well not have lived. 

It is good to multiply experiences. It is good to 
do many things and to have manifold relations with 
the world. It is good to touch many people and to 
see many sights ; but it is good, it is necessarj^, to be 
content with no experience which remains simply as 
experience and does not pass on and into character. 
Events are great if they make dispositions. The 
Natural is precious if " afterward," out of it, comes 
the Spiritual. The experienced man is happy, if he 
has really drunk the rain and sunshine of the ex- 
periences Avluch have come to him into his heart and 
is the ripened man, otherwise he is only like the rock 
on which every passer-by has scrawled his name. 

Thus everywhere the lower furnishes opportunities 
for the higher, and is a failure unless the higher 
blooms out of the ground which the lower has made 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 255 

ready. It is Paul's groaning and travailing creation. 
It is the unity of the universe in which, from end to 
end, there is no hardest, commonest, and cheapest 
thing which, living in simple healthiness and self- 
respect, may not become the gathering point and 
manifestation point of the most infinite celestial 
light, — no stone that may not make an altar. Rever- 
ence the simple., the prosaic, the natural, the real, 
but demand of every common thing of life, whether 
it be your body or your money or your daily experi- 
ence, that it shall bloom to fine results in your own 
soul and in your influence upon the world. Freely 
accept the natural as first, but demand that afterward 
the spiritual shall not fail. 

2. There remains but very little cime for me to 
dwell upon our second truth, which was, you remem- 
ber, the otlier side of that of which I have been 
speaking. As the natural must open into the spiritual 
or it is a failure, so the spiritual must root itself in 
the natural or it becomes vague and unreal. I see 
at once how true this is of the two great illustrative 
instances which I began by pointing out that St. 
Paul uses. The second Adam follows the first 
Adam. Christ comes after and completes the hu- 
manity which had been in the world before His In- 
carnation. And as that Humanity would have been 
sad indeed had He not come to fulfil its glimpses 
with His light and to realize its broken hopes, so 
He, when He has come, needs and demands the hu- 
manity beliind Him, and roots His own life in the 
great universal soil of human life. Ah, yes, the 
Saviour's wonderful career was no mere cloud or 



25G THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 

sunbeam flung out of the sky and floating vaguely 
over a world of which it formed no certain part. He 
felt our human blood through all His veins. His 
most transcendent miracles were done with human 
hands. He loved His age, His city, and His race. 
The least and meanest Jew, the least and meanest 
man, interpreted to Him his Sonship to the Father. 
He knew Himself, and we can know Hini only as we 
believe in Him, and try to understand Him as the 
Son of Man. 

Or, if we take Paul's other illustration, the perfect 
world rests on and finds its interpretation in this 
world of imperfection in which we are living now. I 
cannot understand the man I meet upon the street 
unless I see in him the man who some day is to walk 
in the new Jerusalem. And also the man walking 
in the new Jerusalem is unintelligible unless I know 
he is the same man who once walked here upon the 
street. The fights and victories, the fights and de- 
feats, which he made here have passed into his nature 
and are part and parcel of his life forever. 

Here is the key to the ^ue realism. Here is the 
sign how false the shallow realism is of which its 
artists on canvas or on paper make such base parade. 
The real life, what is it ? Is it the wretched, sordid 
details of earthly living, uninspired by a single sug- 
gestion that in their mud and mire there are the 
seeds of any spiritual, transcendent fruit or flower? 
On the other hand, is the real life a vision of some 
experience beyond the stars which has no connection 
with the dreariness and degradation of many of the 
mortal conditions which it has passed through and 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 257 

left behind? Not so. The real life of a man is his 
highest attainment kept in perpetual association with 
the meanest and commonest experience out of which 
it has been fed. When men shall so write and paint 
the lives of one another, then we shall have tlie 
true realism, — a realism in which, to use the Psalm- 
ist's words, " Truth shall flourish out of the earth and 
Righteousness look down from Heaven." 

In such a completed realism as this lies the sin- 
cerity and healthiness of personal and social life. 
Get hold thoroughly of this idea that the Spiritual 
must always feel behind it the Natural from which it 
proceeds, and from which it is fed, and then how im- 
possible it w^ould be for you to despise any part of 
your life or to think light of any true work which 
you are called to do. If your faith in God is stronger 
for every humble task in which you need and get 
His aid, then that humble task is necessary to the 
fulness of your faith in God. You cannot let go of 
it and fly away. It is redeemed. It will go with 
you to the world where your Redemption will be per- 
fect. It will make the music of your celestial life 
more firm and solid. If so, you cannot despise it 
here or call it slight. 

And also there must come a sympathy between the 
men whose work it is to lay the hard foundations of 
life and the other men whose hands are bidden to 
carry up the loftiest pinnacles and spires into the sky. 
There are those who seem to be doomed to most 
earthly toil; just to be conscientious, and upright, 
and thorough, and true. It seems as if that were 
everything for them. There are other men whose 



258 THE NATUKAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 

souls leap to triumphant thoughts, and whose eyes 
are open to ecstatic visions. The great issue of 
all that I have been saying to you this morning is 
that these two sorts of men belong together, make 
one world, are serving the purposes of one God, and 
making ready one celestial kingdom, and deserve 
each the other's whole-souled respect. It is not that 
the lesser man is making his life successful by mak- 
ing possible a higher life which some other man may 
live, though that is much. It is not possible to look 
at it in such detail as that. It is that in this universe, 
where natural and spiritual succeed and minister to 
one another^ he who at any spot is doing good work 
of any kind is serving the Universal Master and con- 
tributing to the Universal Success. 

Christ had His word of encouragement and 
strength to say to every soldier in His army and to 
every worker at His work. He made both Martha and 
Mary the servants of His will. It is ]iot only His 
loftiest disciples at their loftiest tasks. It is all souls, 
all hands and feet that have duty to perform. They 
all belong to Him; not merely scholars in their 
studies, not merely missionaries in their martyrdoms, 
not merely saints in their closed closets, but every 
working man and woman everywhere, — they are all 
His. The spirit which proceeds from Him may pour 
through the whole mass and find out every particle, 
and give to each an impetus towards its own next 
higher stage of life, and so bear the whole along to- 
gether towards the completion of each man and the 
completion of the whole business and social life, and 
politics, and education, and then, as the crown of 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 259 

them all, Religion. " That is not first which is 
Spiritual, but that which is Natural ; and afterward 
that which is Spiritual ! " But they are all God's ; 
and to make each instinct with what measure of 
His life it is capable of containing, that is to build 
them all into a flight of shining stairs, sweeping up- 
ward into even clearer and intenser light, until he 
who mounts to the full summit stands by the altar 
of God's unclouded presence and realizes the blessed- 
ness of perfect Commuriion with Him. 



XV. 
THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 

*' And Joshua said unto all the people, Behold, this stone shall 
be a witness unto us ; for it hath heard all the words of the Lord 
which He spake unto us : it shall be therefore a witness unto you, 
lest ye deny your God." — Joshua xxiv. 27. 

Joshua had led the people of Israel over the Jor- 
dan and into the promised land as far as Shechem. 
There he halted the host for a most solemn ceremony. 
It was a poor and insignificant thing; it made their 
great invasion to be only like any restless movement 
of one tribe of heathen into the territory of another, 
unless they entered the promised country and began 
their new career distinctly as the people of God. 
Therefore at Shechem Joshua makes them renew 
their sworn dedication to Jehovah. He gives them 
once more the old familiar Mosaic message of the 
Lord: "Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him 
in smcerity and in truth." And when the people 
had answered tlie voice of God with solemn promises 
of loyalty, then Joshua sealed the whole ceremony 
with a picturesque and striking figure. He took a 
great stone and set it up there under an oak which 
was by the sanctuary of the Lord. He said, ''This 
stone has heard what God has said; here it shall 
stand as witness to you lest you deny your God." 
" You may forget," he seemed to say. " Your minds 



THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 261 

are soft and lose impressions. They are hot and burn 
with reckless passion." Here is this hard, cold stone. 
It never will forget, it never will distort the voice 
that it has listened to. When you need it for en- 
couragement and when you need it for rebuke, this 
stone which has heard what God has said shall be 
here to utter forever His unforgotten words. 

All readers of the Bible know how common in its 
pages is this simple, majestic, childlike figure which 
Joshua employed, — the figure which clothes an in- 
animate and unintelligent object with perception and 
memory and the power of utterance. It is the figure 
which children use in their plays. It is the figure 
of a primitive and unsophisticated people, and seems 
to show how near they stand to nature, how close 
they are in the confidence of the rocks and trees and 
stars. It is the figure which creates a large part of 
the mythologies and is at the root of much of the 
monumental instinct of mankind. And iu the Bible 
it is constantly present in its highest, freshest, and 
most vivid form. When Cain kills Abel in the book 
of Genesis it is the actual literal blood of the murdered 
man that takes a voice and cries out from the ground 
so that God hears it up in Heaven. When Job tells 
the story of creation, he makes us hear the very 
" morning stars sing together in the sky." When 
the same Job asserts his integrity and justice, he calls 
upon the very earth that he has tilled to contradict 
him if he does not speak the truth. '' If my land cry 
against me, or that the furrows thereof complain, 
let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead 
of barley." When David goes out into the morning 



262 THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 

sunlight he hears the " Heavens declare the glory of 
God." When Habakkuk is denouncing woes upon 
tlie covetous men and the oppressors of the poor, he 
makes their very houses speak and tell of the in- 
iquity and cruelty which built them. " The stone 
shall cry out of the v/all, and the beam out of the 
timber shall answer it." Wlien Jesus rides across the 
rocky ridge of Olivet toward Jerusalem, He declares 
that the rocks under His feet are all ready to break 
out in His praises if the voices of the people fail. 
"I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the 
stones would immediately cry out." And when St. 
James upbraids the cruel rich men of his day, even . 
the coins of which they have defrauded their servants 
take a voice. '•' Behold the hire of the laborers who 
have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept 
back by fraud, crieth." The Bible is preeminently 
the book of man ; but the world in which man lives 
and the material things he touches are always pres- 
ent in the Bible for his sake. 

The splendor of the sunshine, the whisper of the 
wind, the very smell of the rich ground, are always 
there, not for their own beauty or sweetness, but for 
their ministries and messages to man ; and man and 
nature stand as close to one another as in the child's 
fairy story or the poet's dream, which keep the Bible 
tone and coloring for all the ages. 

I have referred to all these instances only to 
remind you how thoroughly Joshua is a man of the 
Bible when he sets his stone up at Shechem and calls 
upon the people to endow it in their imaginations 
with the powers of hearing and of utterance. " This 



THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 263 

stone hath heard all the words of the Lord.'* Crowded 
away under its hard substance lay the story and the 
Commandments which He had uttered. Nothing un- 
til the new wonder of the phonograph, which packs 
a human voice into the matter of a bit of lead and 
can keep it there for years, and utter it, with all its 
first tones and inflections to a generation now un- 
born, — nothing until this marvel of to-day has so 
made an actual material reality of this imagination 
of the captain of the Jews. Think what that stone 
must have been to all the people ! It had heard God 
speak. The words of God were in it. No wonder 
if they ahnost made it an idol. How it must have 
changed with the changes of their lives ! How to 
their consciences, acute with certain crime, the word 
of God must have spoken out of the stone in stern 
and withering rebuke ! How when some Jew was 
trying to do right, to resist his temptations, he must 
have heard God speak to him out of the stone, giving 
him approbation and encouragement and strength ! 
The very rough face of the rock must have seemed 
to those simple and susceptible people to smile or 
frown on them as they passed before it, carrying 
their conscious experiences in them. All the more 
becaM[^ it spoke no audible word, it must have 
seemSr to have its own voice for every man. 

It is no fancy, certainly, to say that there are 
always people who are to the world they live in 
what that stone in Shechem was to the nation in 
the midst of which it stood. Not voluble people, 
not people with their glib and ready judgment 
upon everything which goes on about them, per- 



264 THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 

haps people who seem to the world at large mero 
stones. But people who '• have heard the words of 
the Lord which He hath spoken," and who henceforth 
"are witnesses unto us lest we deny our God." 
Such men or women I am sure that we have known. 
People who some time in their lives had had the pri- 
mary truth of God, the Divinity of Righteousness, 
spoken so into their ears that it has filled their being. 
Thenceforward they spoke that word in all its sim- 
plicity to everybody. All earnest struggle after 
righteousness feels their approval and sympathy, and 
counts it really God's. All shuffling, cowardly, and 
wanton sin hides or hurries away from their rebuk- 
ing presence. They declare no subtleties and no 
refinements. They simply, broadly utter right and 
wrong. Such people have a noble place and func- 
tion in. the world. Men who would not own God's 
judgments directly, own God's judgments as they 
come through them. They purify and bless the 
circle, the community in which they live, as that 
stone under the oak at Shechem must have seemed 
to purify and bless the whole land of Israel. 

But I do not mean to speak too generally of this 
piece of picturesque history which seems to me to 
suggest a very definite and useful subject for our 
thought. I want to speak to you this afternoon of 
the real nature and value of association, of that 
power which gives to the objects which surround 
mankind a sort of human character and make them 
vocal with messages of comfort and strength and 
rebuke. This is the real subject of our verse. 
Joshua's rock was transformed by the power of asso- 



THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 265 

elation. One hour it was a great dead stone, as 
silent and uninspiring as any other of the stones among 
which it lay. The next hour it had been taken up 
and separated from all its mates forever, a sacred 
stone, a fountain of inspiration, a fire of poetry and 
life. It was the association with the solemn self-con- 
secration of the Jews which had transformed it. And 
our association is always the transforming power. 
Out of our use of the power of association comes 
much of our best education and our deepest re- 
sponsibility. 

The work that man does upon the world he lives in, 
then, is really double. He makes his changes in its 
outward face. He turns it by his toil of spade or 
chisel into forms of use or beauty. He sprinkles it 
with cities and ploughs it up and down with furrows. 
This is the first work. And then more subtly ]ie 
fills it with his associations. Without a.ny chauge in 
their shape he sends his history in through the 
mountains and the fields, so that it clings there for- 
ever and never can be separated. He twines the 
things that he has done with the scenery of the 
earth, so that thereafter they are inseparable. Every- 
body who has any sensibility sees that this second 
power of man over nature is the finer and the nobler. 
It is the greater enrichment of the Avorld by man. 
Herod builds a temple at Jerusalem. With vast labor 
he levels the rough places, and hews the great stone 
blocks into shape. When it is done, his temple 
shines like a jewel on its hill. Jesus comes right 
across the little valley to the Mount of Olives. He 
changes nothing outward. He sticks no spade into 



266 THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 

its surface. He leaves each bush and olive-tree as 
He finds it. But there He ofttimes resorts with His 
disciples. There He lies prostrate in the struggle of 
Gethsemane. There at last His feet touch the earth 
as He ascends to Heaven, and ever since those days 
the mountain burns in the dearest and most sacred 
memory of man. There are men to whom this seems 
to be the one value of the external world — to utter 
the men who have lived and displayed their natures 
in it. Mere beauty of scenery, mere triumphs of 
gigantic engineering which have changed the face of 
the earth, have little charm for them except as they 
are the background of human history. This is what 
makes the Old World richer than the New. It is the 
absence of association in our bays and headlands, in 
our rivers and our mountains and our prairies, that 
makes a sort of vast silence in our enormous West, 
solemn enough and infinitely impressive, but wholly 
different from the chorus of voiceful memories that 
thrills one who lands on the shores across the sea and 
finds 

** Each gray old rock a grand historic thing, 
Each bright wave boasting it has borne a king, 
Undying footprints on each sandy beach, 
Each old wave vocal with heroic speech." 

Evidently one great value of this principle of asso- 
ciation which clothes the world with the memories of 
human life, and makes it utter man, is that it keeps in 
mind and constantly asserts the centralness and right- 
ful superiority of man in the world where he lives. 
The thinker in whom this principle is strong must 



THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 267 

always practically hold that man is the centre, that 
all else on earth exists for him. And without such 
a faith as that, all human experience seems to testify 
that man cannot live his best and fullest life. Man 
is greater than nature, — nature exists for man. 
These are truths upon which, thus far at least, in hu- 
man history has hung man's power of conceiving the 
Gublimest hopes and feeling the most pressing sense of 
obligation. If ever those truths should be success- 
fully denied and man dislodged from his centralness, 
I think we cannot know how all the highest life of 
man would suffer. That self-respect which lies at 
the root of all moral struggle and all religion, that 
self-respect which is what makes credible to the 
Christian the great Christian revelations of the divine 
fatherhood and the divine redemption, that self-re- 
spect which is the real starting-point for true humil- 
ity, it could not be maintained if man's life should 
be shown to be coordinate with all the lives around 
it, no more the purpose and interpreter of the rest 
than the lives of the lion or the oak. And the actual 
preservation of this sense of centralness lies very 
largely in the way in which man covers the earth 
with his associations and makes the landmarks of 
nature take their best value from the stories which 
they have to tell of him. 

Nor is this secondary character, this monumental 
value which the earth acquires, something which 
comes from a few great exploits which wonderful 
men have done upon its highest pinnacles of promi- 
nence. There is a gradually increasing richness in 
the earth to which every man who in the humblest 



268 THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 

station lives a worthy and a faithful life contributes. 
The outer world gets the voice of God, not only from 
God directly, but from some Joshua who has spoken 
it in its presence ; and the world in which we live be- 
comes vocal with Him to men in future days when- 
ever any man protests against wickedness, or speaks 
a word of truth or charity, or utters the God of 
strength in patience in any corner of the most ob- 
scure experience. I know not how real, how practi- 
cal, this seems to you ; but I am sure that the world 
is a better place for you and me to live in to-day, not 
merely for the hundred great pattern lives which 
have passed into the heavens and which we call still 
by their names, but far more for the countless, nanne- 
less multitude of men and women who have wrought 
into the very substance of the earth, where at last 
they lay their bodies in unnoticed graves, the great, 
first, simplest words of God, that man was sacred, 
that duty was possible, that self-sacrifice was sweet, 
and that love for one's brother was the crown of life. 
And you ought not to be satisfied until you find your- 
self able to feel that the hope of doing something by 
your living to make the world in a real, although an 
unappreciable, degree more full of these words for 
the men who are to follow us, is the noblest and 
most inspiring promise Avhich can be set before 
your soul. 

The world is too large for some of us to think of. 
Turn, then, and think about the houses where you 
live. How large a part of their influence upon you 
depends upon this principle of association. Of the 
walls of a house where much life has been lived, 



THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 269 

where many experiences have been passed through, 
might not one say exactly what Joshua said about 
the stone that he set up in Sliechem, " They have 
heard all the words of the Lord Avhich He spake 
unto you " ? And indeed the parallel goes farther. 
The word which your household walls have heard 
from God, and which they are still constantly utter- 
ing to you if 3'ou can only hear it, is the same word 
which He had spoken in the presence of the old stone 
at Shechem, and of which that stone was a perpetual 
Avitness to the people. What was the Avitness of 
that stone ? It was the necessity and the blessing 
of obedience to God. That was what God had com- 
manded. That was what the people had sworn. 
That was what the stone had heard and what it bore 
perpetual witness of afterward to those who passed 
it and heard with their consciences its silent voice ; 
that not by his own will, but in subjection to a will 
far greater than his own, the Jew was to occupy this 
new land and to live the new life which was before 
him. And not merely this stone, but every monu- 
ment which had drunk in his nation's history and 
stood to utter it perpetually, had the same tale to 
tell. The rock wdiere Abraham had carried up his 
son and stood with the knife just ready to complete 
the dreadful sacrifice ; the stone at Bethel where 
Jacob vowed his vow of consecration ; the twelve 
stones that the Jews left piled in the bed of Jordan 
when they crossed dry-shod, — they all told the same 
story ; they all meant the same thing. It was that 
Jewish truth of covenant. Since God has done this 
for ns we belong to Him, we hereby acknowledge His 



270 THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 

ownership and give ourselves to His servic-9. In that 
truth all the land was steeped. And its utterance 
came from every rude monument which any Jew or 
all the Jewish people had set up to commemorate 
mercy and to proclaim dedication. Now think of 
any house wdiich by long life of some family in it has 
become monumental. Its walls have other and far 
deeper values than these for which you or your 
fathers paid the architects and carpenters when it 
was first built. Those walls are steeped in truth, 
and each room speaks it in its own peculiar voice. 
What is that truth ? Really the same old truth 
which was spoken from end to end of old Palestine, 
that house of Israel which had heard and kept so 
many of the words of God. The necessity and 
blessing of obedience. The old truth of covenant 
between man and God. It is not put in the hard old 
Jewish way as it speaks to you out of the walls of 
your Christian home. It is richened and deepened. 
It speaks as something essential and not arbitrary, 
something which could not be otherwise than as it 
is ; but in its new form it is the same old truth, that 
man's life belongs to God, and that there is no true 
life for man except in God, and that man lives in 
God only by loving obedience. It may be that in 
the house where you are living is the room where 
you were born. That chamber must sometimes 
speak to you of the mere fact of your life ; apart 
from all its circumstances, or rather gathering all its 
circumstances into the one great fact, the voice of 
God speaking to you from those walls within which 
your life began to be must say, " You are," '' You 



THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 271 

live," in such a tone that the wondrousness of life, 
the blessedness of life, and the tie between all life 
and Him who is the ever-livino; and the all-creatino: 
one, must come out to you as if a voice that j^ou 
could hear proclaimed them in your ears. Perhaps 
there is some room in your house where for the first 
time you faced the awful mystery of death, where for 
the first time you watched that slow, sure, gentle, 
irresistible untwisting of the golden cord and saw 
mortality fade into immortality before your very 
eyes. Can that room ever be silent to you again ? 
There is where God gave you at once the keenest 
pain and the sublimest triumph over pain that the 
human heart can know. There He taught you at 
once the necessity and the blessedness of submission. 
Or perhaps there is some room where you yourself 
went up once and looked in silence into the very 
door of death. Some Hezekiah chamber where the 
message seemed to come to you that you must die, 
and where you prayed to God that you might live, 
and told Him how you would give the spared life all 
to Him. Or perhaps some solemn room w^here your 
new birth came to you, where you fought out the 
struggle of your soul's life, where at last you knew 
that you, risen as if from very death, had indeed be- 
gun to live not for yourself, but unto Him who died 
for you and rose again. The rooms where your 
children have been born. The room where you first 
found yourself rich, the room where you first found 
yourself poor, the room of your friendships, the room 
of your daily bread, all of these, and around them 
the whole house with its associations of quiet, un- 



272 THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 

eventful, but most significant years. They have all 
'' heard the voice of the Lord which He spake unto 
3'ou;" and if you have eaiis to hear, they all ''bear 
witness unto you lest you deny your God." 

Remember that the more rich and full of experi- 
ences your life is, the more the house you live in 
and all its circumstances and accidents will grow 
rich. I do not wonder that there are some to whom 
all that I have been saying will seem unmeaning 
and absurd. No voices come out of their homes, 
because no genuine deep life is really lived within 
them. This surely is part of what is meant by tlie 
fickleness and transitoriness of our ordinary life. 
Men flee from one home to another, from one conti- 
nent to another, from one occupation to another, 
not because anything drives them from the old, not 
because anything really valuable and intelligible 
draws them in the new, but because they have not 
lived deeply enough to make themselves associations, 
because they have felt nothing deeply and thought 
nothing deeply, enjoyed nothing intensely, suffered 
nothing very keenly in the old home or the old oc- 
cupation, and so any morning they can pack up and 
be off with hardly a suspicion of a pang. Your life 
cannot be frivolous or vulgar unless you are frivolous 
or vulgar. He who complains of his circumstances 
really complains of himself and is his own accuser. 
He who tires of his house really tires of himself. 
The restlessness that comes of a divine desire presses 
deeper down into the rock on which it stands to find 
the springs of life. It keeps you where you are. 
The restlessness that comes of human thirst wanders 



THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 273 

over the surface of the earth, filling its dipper from 
every little pool caught in the hollows of the rocks. It 
sends you all abroad. One is sure that all increase 
of depth in life must bring a greater stability of 
life, fill our towns with more hereditary and ances- 
tral homes, and give more sacredness to the whole 
character of a community. 

I cannot help saying how the same thing is true 
of churches, and of the easy wandering from church 
to church of Vvdiich we see so much. He who has 
lived deeply in any church connection, he whose 
church building and whose pew are bound up with 
the most profound experiences that man can ever 
undergo, may change his old church for a new, but 
if he does, it will be a solemn, thoughtful act done 
only under the certain stress of duty and true spirit- 
ual conviction. The church W'here he has repented 
and trusted and grown in grace, the church where he 
has met Christ, where he has known himself, will be 
his home, from which only some deepest change can 
separate him. It may come, for there are demands of 
duty to one's soul which cut through all associations 
and compel a man to leave the dearest things behind. 
But such a change from church to church as that is 
wholly different from the flippant and unmeaning 
changes wJiich show, not so much w-hat the new 
church may hope to do for the wanderer, as what the 
deserted church has failed to do. 

It ought to be harder and harder for men to do 
wrong the older that the}' grow. For all around 
them ought to gather the restraining power of associ- 
ations. The voice of the Lord ought to speak out 



274 THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 

of more and more of the things about us, bearing a 
continual witness to us, lest we "■ deny our God." Re- 
member that to deny our God is not to be what men 
call sceptical. It is not to blaspheme. It is simply 
to live as if there Avere no God, — no God to help 
us, no God to be responsible to, no God for us to trust 
and love. There is no man who does not know that 
danger, who does not feel it every day. In your 
schools, in your homes, in your stores, everywhere, 
the terrible danger of denying God ! Against that 
danger God bears ever fresh and present witness of 
Himself in your hearts. Every morning His voice 
is new. Every evening His voice pursues you to 
your rest. But besides this direct continual pres- 
ence, there is this other testimony of Himself which 
I have spoken of to-day. He fills the world of associa- 
tion with utterances of Himself. Oh, as we grow in 
life, tlie world ought to be becoming to us more and 
more full of monumental pictures of human noble- 
ness, patience, self-sacrifice, courage, meekness, so 
that we shall be more and more sure that goodness 
and heroism are possible for man. It ought to be al- 
ways more and more full of the recollection of times 
when we ourselves mounted to enthusiastic faith and 
earnest resolution and unselfish action, so that it shall 
be lessf and less possible for us to hide behind a low 
conception, a low expectation of ourselves. It ought 
to grow bright with more and more luminous points 
that never cease to burn wdth the memory of some 
certain experience of the deep, deep, dear love of 
God. These are the things which men are tempted 
to doubt and to den)^, — that it Js po^sibje for ifnen tp 



y 



THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 275 

be true and good, that each man is himself bound to 
goodness and truth, and that God loves us. Believe 
these really, believe these constantlj^, and it must be 
very hard to sin. Blessed is he whose life fills itself/^ 
with monumental memories on which these truths 
are graven deep. For him the great w4de open plain 
of life, wdiere his wandering sight and steps seemed 
lost, narrows itself till he finds himself walking be- 
tween the shining walls of righteousness along the 
certain road of duty. Less and less does he seek to 
wander. Duty, dear for itself and dear for the mem- 
ories that hallow it, satisfies him and inspires him. 
The past is to him not burden, but wings ; and when 
he comes to God at last, it is a whole lifetime rich f^ 
with accumulated thankfulness that he lays down at^ 
the Saviour's feet. 

And think how with the successive generations of 
mankind, each leaving countless new monuments of 
divine love and human possibility upon the earth, the 
earth itself is growing richer every year. Every j 
year some new valley gets its consecration from some ^ 
new soul's struggle with sin. Every year some new 
mountain-top burns with another soul's rapture of % 
salvation. We read of the promise of the new 
heavens and the new earth wherein righteousness V 
shall dwell. Are not the heavens and the earth ever 
growing new, newer, and more full of righteousness 
every day? When the time shall come that every 
star in heaven and every stone on earth shall be vocal 
with some word of God which it has heard, and in 
their midst shall live the race of men, no longer deaf 
and obstinate, but quick-eared to hear and loving- 



276 THE STONE OF SHECHEM. 

hearted to obey those words as they come crowding 
in, making the air sacred on every side — when that 
shall come — which the world's best pictures of Chris- 
tian life now suggest and prophesy — shall not the 
promise then have been fulfilled, and the '^New 
Heavens and the New Earth wherein dwelleth right- 
eousness" be a sublime reality? 

What is it possible for us to do? These two things, 
oh, my friends : 

First, to hear every voice of God that speaks to us 
out of any consecrated bit of this old earth where 
men have lived so long, and to learn from them all > 
these first truths of human life, that man can be very , 
good and brave, that we ourselves are debtors to all 
our old resolutions and to the loftiest moments of 
our past, and that God loves us. 

Second, to live such lives so true, so deep, so rich, 
so pure, that the world shall get new monuments by . 
us, that in some little circle where we lived the re- % 
suit of our living, when the certain day comes and 
we pass on to other unseen fields of service, may be 
that some stone which our lives touched shall be a 
witness to the men and women whom we leave be- 
hind us, because it has heard the words of the Lord 
that He spake through our lives, that it may be a 
witness unto them to help them, to restrain them, to 
inspire them when they are tempted to deny their 
God. 

Certainly every life to which blessings like these 
are given is a rich success. 



XVI. 

THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST. 

" Howbeit, we know this man whence He is : but when Christ 
Cometh, no man knoweth whence He is." — John vii. 27. 

Very different and contradictory are the demands 
which men make of that to which they are moved to 
give their reverence and service. Most men ask of 
their religion that it sliall be familiar, that it shall 
have to do with daily life, that it shall seem to issue 
from the heart of common things and clothe those 
things with a light which makes them radiant. 
They dread mystery. They hate to be bidden to lift 
up tlieir eyes and to look far away. This verse out 
of the Gospel of St. John has just the other story. 
In it the men of Galilee are speaking and telling 
why Christ is not acceptable to them. He is too 
familiar. They knew him from His childhood. 
He has come out of a household which tiiey have seen 
beside them all their lives. " We know this man, 
whence He is." All this seemed to make it incredi- 
ble to them that He should be the Christ for whom 
their people have been waiting all these years. The 
fulfilment of a hundred prophecies, the answer to a 
million prayers, it could not be that when at last He 
came it should be thus. The sun had shone in glory, 
the mighty clouds had gathered, and the luxuriant 



278 THE NEAENESS OF CHEIST. 

rain poured down. They bad stood and waited for 
a worthy issue of it all, and here came quietly, pierc- 
ing through the sod which the sun had mellowed, a 
little flower which the rain had fed. Where was the 
chariot of the skies ? Where w^as the awful mystery ? 
It was all too simple, too familiar. '' When Christ 
Cometh no man knoweth whence He is. But we 
know this man whence He is. This cannot be the 
Christ ! " 

There is one distinction in the world's geography 
which comes immediately to our minds when we 
thus state the different thoughts and desires of men 
concerning their religion. We remember how the 
whole world is in general divided into two hemi- 
spheres upon this matter. One half of the world, 
the great dim East, is mystic. It insists upon not see- 
ing anything too clearly. Make any one of the 
great ideas of life distinct and clear, and immediately 
it seems to the Oriental to be untrue. He has an 
instinct which tells him that the vastest thoughts are 
too vast for the human mind, and that if they are 
made to present themselves in forms of statement 
which the human mind can comprehend, their nature 
is violated and their strength is lost. 

On the other hand, the Occidental, the man of the 
West, demands clearness and is impatient with mystery. 
He loves a definite statement as much as his brother 
of the East dislikes it. He insists on knowing what 
the eternal and infinite forces mean to his personal 
life, how they will make him personally happier and 
better, almost how they will build the house over his 
head, and cook the dinner on his hearth. This is the 



THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST. 279 

difference between the East and the West, between 
man on the banks of the Ganges and man on the 
banks of the Mississippi. Plenty of exceptions of 
course there are. Mystics in Boston and St. Louis. 
Hard-headed men of facts in Bombay and Calcutta. 
The two great dispositions cannot be shut off from 
one another by an ocean or a range of mountains. 
In some nations and places, as for instance among 
the Jews and in our own New England, they notably 
commingle. But in general they thus divide the 
world between them. The East lives in the moon- 
light of mystery, the West in the sunlight of scien- 
tific fact. The East cries out to the Eternal for 
vague impulses. The West seizes the present with 
light hands, and will not let it go till it has furnished it 
with reasonable, intelligible motives. Each misunder- 
stands, distrusts, and in large degree despises the other. 
But the two hemispheres together, and not either one 
by itself, make up the total world. 

But of course such geographical suggestions are 
most immediately interesting as they represent what 
reappears in every man. There is an east and a 
west in each of us. In one hemisphere of our being 
each of us is mystic and transcendental, and in the 
other hemisphere of our being each of us is limited 
and practical and concrete, demanding the tangible 
and clear. No man is destitute of either side. You 
think you have found the man in whom one side or 
the other is totally absent ; but watch him long enough 
and some day the missing hemisphere catches a flash 
of light and show^s that it is there, little as you 
dreamed of it, stoutly as he may have denied that it 



280 THE WEAKNESS OF CHKIST. 

was there himself. The problem of every man's 
character and career is what the coming problem of 
the world's life evidently is, how these two halves, 
the east and the west, are to be proportioned and 
related to each other, and into Avhat sort of union 
they may come to make something greater and more 
human than either of them is by itself. The foot set 
on one present spot of present earth, and the eye 
which ranges the world of stars, to see which Avay 
the foot should walk. Imagination which questions 
the remotest possibilities and prudence, which 
studies the immediate conditions. Hope which per- 
ishes if it defines itself, and Duty which must know 
the very thing Avhich now needs to be done. It is 
the proportion and relationship of these in a man's 
life which mark what sort of a man he is. Every 
education of a man's life, every consciousness which 
a man has of himself, every religion which seeks to 
be a man's illumination, and leaves out either side of 
a man's nature, is partial and so false. The world's 
religions have failed, and are failing here to-day. 
They have been too much either mystic exaltations 
or hard methods of economy. Surely there is some- 
thing better which they might be by being both. 
Such the complete religion must be when it is per- 
fectly revealed. 

The perfect religion which will do its work for the 
whole human nature — the coming of the Son of 
Man, which, as Jesus said, must be '' as the lightning 
which Cometh out of the east and shineth even unto 
the west" — will comprehend within itself all that the 
partial religions ever had of good. It will be no 



THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST. 281 

mere compromise. The base meetings of ideas or 
men are in the region of compromise. Their noble 
meetings are in the region of comprehension. Com- 
promise leaves out the essence and strength of two 
truths and then makes a barren union of the color- 
less remainders. Comprehension unites the spiritual 
substance of both with a larger truth than either, 
and then lets the new unity create its new form with 
perfect freedom. One grows to believe in methods 
of compromise less and less, in methods of compre- 
hension more and more. We talk of reconciling one 
truth with another. How impertinent it is ! Who are 
we that we should thrust in our petty persons be- 
tween Kings, and think that we can make them know 
each other? Who are we that we should dare to 
ifndertake to tell majestic truths what each of them 
must give up in order that the other shall not be 
offended? Such reconciliations by compromise al- 
ways fail. No ! let us give the great truths souls and 
lives large enough to meet in, and they Avill know 
each other without our help, and mingle as two 
kingly streams mingle their water in the sunshine 
to make the yet more royal river. 

Here, then, are these two truths, both of them cer- 
tainly true. One of them is that religion is sublime 
and far away, and outgoes our life. The other, that 
religion is familiar and close at hand. One is for- 
ever looking for the Son of Man coming in the 
clouds of Heaven. The other is always craving 
the presence of Jesus of Nazareth at the fireside 
of the home. Each truth demands assertion. Each 
grows restless when the other seems to be taking 



282 THE NEARNESS OF CHMST. 

possession of the field and monopolizing Christi- 
anity. 

When we ask after the comprehensive conception 
of religion which shall freely include both these 
truths, at once we recognize that before we can 
get hold of it we must first grasp more fully than we 
do the largeness, the many-sidedness, of the nature 
of man. Religion is for man. To discuss religion 
apart from man, as if it were a system of abstract 
truth, is futile. It is not a religious sj^stem, but a 
religious man, that we are after. Religion is a life, a 
nature, a being, not a system or a law. Therefore 
to understand religion you must understand man ; 
and to see how the great ultimate religion must 
freely comprehend both of the two truths which have 
claimed religious thought by turns, we must first 
take in the largeness of human nature wherein both 
of these thoughts are embodied, and which the great 
perfect religion, when it comes, must fully satisfy. 

And now, of all the facts concerning man, none is 
more manifest than this, that in his nature are two 
elements, to his life there are two sides. One is 
familiar and domestic, the other is sublime and 
transcendental. Look at him ! See how he deals 
both with the earth and with the heavens. With 
the earth which is his daily home. He treads upon 
its soil ; he delves into its bosom ; he plants his seed 
in it and eats the fruit that it produces ; he drinks 
of its streams ; he sails upon its oceans ; he builds 
his house upon its plains ; he trades in its wealth ; 
he flourishes or fails according to its changing for- 
tunes ; and then, while he is walking on the earth, 



THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST. 283 

all the while his head is among the stars, and his 
sight goes far beyond them. His deeds are clear, 
definite, concrete, but his motives go out into regions 
Avhere he cannot follow them. His principles, Avhich 
come to the most commonplace applications, are 
themselves but reenactments of the foundations of 
the universe. The lightning strikes this special, hard, 
visible, tangible piece of timber, and sets it into 
flame. But the lightning was born in the myste- 
rious bosom of a cloud which no eye can penetrate. 
The sunlight shines upon the tools of man's most 
ordinary task ; but the sun from which the sunlight 
comes is a deep world of fire which withers and flings 
back his gaze. Everywhere man is this double thing. 
The living which he makes is narrow, practical, pro- 
jsaic. The life which he lives is a fragment of the 
life of God. Now he is busy with the multiplication 
table to count up his income or his rent ; and now 
he is on the Gummit of Sinai w^ith Moses, taking 
the tables of the Eternal Law out of the hands of 
God. 

I do not say that these two elements of his nature, 
these two sides of his life, stand wholly separate from 
one another, as they appear when I thus describe 
them. It is not so. They are in closest connection. 
The familiar task is always being elevated and en- 
larged by the greatness of the infinite principle. 
And the infinite principle is always being concen- 
trated and embodied in the familiar task. The 
dream and tlie duty, the prayer and the bargain, are 
always claiming each other as portions of the one 
same life. But do you not know how they still are 



284 THE WEAKNESS OF CHRIST. 

two, and how strangely they divide your human life 
between them? 

It is one of the first results of this fact concerning 
man, that he is to himself at once intelligible and 
mysterious, mj'sterious and intelligible. '^ As un- 
known and yet well known," said St. Paul about 
himself ; and he might have said it about any man. 
Do you not know what I mean ? Are there not 
moments in your life when it seems as if you under- 
stood and knew yourself through and through? You 
have listened to this clank of your machinery so long, 
that you know every sound it makes. You have 
handled it and watched it, and are entirely familiar 
with the way in which every shaft of habit moves, 
and how each toothed wheel fits into the next toothed 
wheel, and what yon did yesterday gave birth to 
what you are doing to-day, and will have its grand- 
child in what you are to do to-morrow. And just 
then, when everything seemed perfectly transparent, 
has the distance never opened round you, and deep- 
ened and deepened till you felt that if there was any- 
thing which you did not know, it w^as yourself — this 
self which had to do with the ends of the universe 
and the eternity behind you and the eternity before? 
"Know myself ! " You say, "Indeed I do," grasping 
your own warm, hard flesh. " Am I not this, which 
lives thus ? Why should I think myself mysterious ? " 
And tlien instantly, " Know myself ! God forbid ! 
Who am I that I should enter into the bosom of the 
Eternal purpose, and study there what only there has 
real and final being ? Let me stand in awe before mj^ 
unknown self and wonder." Poor and mangled is 



THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST. 285 

the life which has not thus seemed both to under- 
stand and to be ignorant about itself. It must be 
either useless or visionless. 

And now, to come at last to the point for which 
all this long study has been undertaken. This nature 
of man decrees the necessary nature of his religion. 
Here is man, familiar and mysterious, known and 
unknown to himself and to his brethren. AVhat 
must the Christ be who shall be that man's Saviour ? 
Must He not come to man in both parts of his double 
life ? Must He not speak to man here, where all is 
definite and plain, here by his work-bench and his 
fireside ; here where man needs a brother's sym- 
pathy; here where duty must be just as clear as 
daylight ; here where man must know whether he is 
doing right or wrong by unmistakable words of re- 
buke or praise spoken directly in his listening ear? 
And then, no less, is it not true that in the farthest 
depths of his own mystery to which he can go, man 
still must find Christ waiting and hear Christ speak ? 
Out of the heart of the unknown must come the 
Christ he knows so well, saying, '' I am here too." 
He who is Son of Man must be also Son of God. 

It is not possible to lose either of those hemi- 
spheres of His power and not lose Christ. Lose one, 
and He is a vague wind haunting the universe, dis- 
turbing, not directing, us. Lose the other, and He 
is a prudent counsellor who has nothing to say to 
our highest aspirations, and no answer to our deepest 
questions. Keep both, and He is the whole Christ, 
the Alpha and Omega, so enfolding and outgoing 
any possible reach of our existence, that we dare go 



286 THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST. 

forth to our farthest possibility, sure that we shall 
find Him there, and dare come in to our most famil- 
iar domesticit)^ sure that there, too. He will be 
present with His sympath)^. His understanding, and 
His help. 

I read the Gospels, and this Christ is there. Who 
is this that feeds the hungry crowd at the lakeside, 
and that same night comes walking on the water to 
His frightened followers ? Nay, who in the very feed- 
ing of the crowd is close to their human hunger on 
one side, and close to the heart and power of God 
upon the other? Did any soul come near Him and 
not hear at once the voice of the brother Jew and 
the voice of the celestial wisdom in the tones, so in- 
timate and yet so strange, which fell upon his ear? 

I open the story of the Christian Church, and 
there too is this Christ. He is the rule of life and 
the infinite satisfaction of the soul through all the 
Christian ages. AVhen the Church has allowed Him 
or bidden Him to be only the one or only the other, 
she has lost His power. Both periods there have 
been in her history. Sometimes she has made her 
Christ a beautiful, impracticable vision. Sometimes 
she has harnessed Him to human machineries, and 
made Him almost a drudge ; but always He has 
claimed the fulness of his Saviourship, and been, in 
spite of her, at once the known and unknown, the 
familiar friend and the transcendent inspiration of 
the Church's life. May the Christ of the Gospels 
and the Christ of the Church be our Christ, my 
friends, our whole Christ, in all the fulness of His 
Christhood ! 



THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST. 287 

I have spoken thus of the double presentation of 
the Christian faith, and we have seen how the result 
is that dangers present themselves on either side. 
It is the danger upon one side only which our text 
records, and of that I would now speak exclusively 
in the remainder of my sermon. The Jews com- 
plained of Jesus that He was too familiar, that there 
was too little of distance and mystery about Him. 
" We know this man whence He is." Is not our first 
thought about their complaint this : that it shows 
how little in earnest they were ? If they had really 
been in earnest, the nearer they could have got to 
Christ, the closer they could have brought Him to 
themselves, the more familiar He could have seemed, 
the more they would have rejoiced. While your 
faith is a subject of speculation, or an object of per- 
sonal pride, you are ready enough to throne it in 
some far-off splendor, and drape the curtains of dark- 
ness around it where it sits ; but when the time 
comes that you need it, that yon must have it or you 
will die, then you cry out for it to come down from 
its high seat and be close to jouv aching want, and 
open to you the very secrets of its inmost being. 

Oh, what a history is here of the experience of 
many souls ! They were jealous for the divinity of 
Christ. In asserting His divinity they would sepa- 
rate Him from the sordidness and turmoil of our 
commonplace existence. They would make Him 
different in sort from us. They would deny that we 
could know Him by what we found in ourselves. 
And then some day there came the stress and strain. 
The commonplace became transfigured and became 



288 THE XEARNES'S OF CHRIST. 

tragical. The ordinary human incidents — - birth, 
death, success, failure, love, hate, aye food, and drink, 
and poverty, and wealth — were things of spiritual 
criticalness. And then their Christ could no longer 
sit upon a distant throne. The mystery must open ; 
we must have Him here and now. The Son of God 
must be the Son of Man. We must know by our 
own hearts what He is. His pity, and patience, and 
indignation, and delight in faithfulness, whether it 
succeed or fail, must be revealed to us by these same 
powers, as the}^ feebly display themselves in us. We 
will not drag Him down, but our whole life mounts 
up and claims Him. It is worthy of a God, and so 
the God enters into it ; and lo ! we know Him whence 
He is. He ceases not to be God, but He is Man, all 
the more human because of His divinity. 

Tliis is the revelation, and the light, and the 
change which has come to countless souls. When 
they intensely needed a Christ whom they could 
know, then the Christ whom they had thought it 
reverence not to pretend to know, revealed Himself 
and claimed their knowledge. The great difference 
in men's theology is this : To one man, theology is 
totally different from life ; to another man, theology 
is the culmination and fulfilment of life. To one 
man, Deity hovers over humanity as a foreign 
heaven, made of other substance, unintelligible by 
any sjaiipathy of common being; to another man. 
Deity underlies humanity as the earth underlies the 
countless trees which grow out of its bosom, bearing 
witness of what it is, making its silent qualities vocal 
in the chorus of their shooting branches and whis- 



THE NEAENESS OF CHRIST. 289 

periiig leaves. Great, infinitely precious, is the hour 
when that revelation comes to a young man's soul. 
Sometimes in sunny stillness, creeping on with the 
bright growth of gradual life. Sometimes with a 
sudden tempest, smiting the clouds asunder and 
letting the broad light pour in. Come how it will, 
the hour when a youiig man knows that Christ 
wants to be known of him, that all his life is full 
of revelation of Christ if he can hear it, that hour is 
the hour of his new birth, henceforth there is no 
common or unclean for him — Christ is glorious in 
everything, and everything is glorious in Christ. 

Such an illumination of a man's Christianity, of 
his whole thought of Christ, when it has once come, 
runs everywhere ; it sends its power through all he 
does and is. The close association of Christ with 
human life does not degrade Christ, but exalts 
human life, because Christ is stronger than life 
and dominates it. See one or two places in wdiich 
this is true. 

Sometimes we shrink from recognizing that Christ 
is the Saviour of society. It seems to make Chris- 
tianity a mere police force if we say that men live 
more peaceably with one another, and are more 
thrifty, and more independent, and more helpful to 
each other where the Christian Church is thriving 
and the Christian Gospel is earnestly preached and 
thoroughly bolieved. But surely such a feeling as 
that must come from too base an estimate of the 
value of a community and of its best life. If society 
is sacred, if the living together of a group of God's 
children on God's earth has infinite meaning and 



290 THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST. 

infinite issues, then that Christ, the power and wis- 
dom of God, should be power and wisdom in society 
is not strange. It w^ould be strange and dreadful 
if He did not come to it and purify and elevate all 
its life. When the people of Nazareth said, '' He 
cannot be the Christ, for He is one of us. His 
brothers and sisters, are they not here with us ? " it 
was not Christ, but Nazareth and brotherhood and 
sisterhood, that they were dishonoring. If they could 
have seen how essentially sacred those things were, 
then Christ would have been all the more Christ 
because of His sympathy in their sacredness. 

And so of your own personal life. You say, in 
some moods, " What can Christ care for my tempta- 
tions and my struggles ? I should think less of Him 
if He did care for them. Let the great Master lead 
the army and lay out the broad campaign, but it is 
not work of His to be going up and down among 
the tents seeing how it fares with the sick soldiers, 
strengthening the cowards, and comforting the 
lonely hearts." But then, perhaps, the fact becomes 
indisputably manifest to you that He does do just 
that. And the fact that He does do it brings j^ou 
revelation. You see Avhat a soul is. What the peril 
of a soul is in the light of Christ's strange watchful- 
ness for it. And when you have once seen that, then 
the watchfulness is strange no longer. The Cross on 
which Christ dies for man shows man that man is 
worth dying for. So the Cross makes itself credible, 
and bows the sceptic, proud and yet humble, at its 
foot. 

And even of things less critical than struggles and 



THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST. 291 

temptations, if, indeed, there be anything in which 
struggle and temptation are not consciously or un- 
consciously included. Does it disturb your thought 
of Christ when you ask yourself to consider whether 
he cares how your house stands, how your table is 
spread, how your trade prospers, whether you get 
or miss the learning which you aim at, whether you 
gain or lose the game you play ? Ah, is not the 
story of Christ feeding the hungry people at Gen- 
nesaret a true part of the Christian Gospel? Could 
you tear it out of the New Testament, and have the 
whole Gospel still? Does it disturb and lessen? 
Does it not confirm and enlarge the truth of Christ 
to you as you read it between the death of John the 
Baptist and the serruon to the Pharisees ? " He was 
known to them in the breaking of bread." Re- 
member that. You must know wdiat you, the whole 
of you, are to Christ, the whole of Hun. And then 
it will be clear how even your comfort and your joy 
concern Him — how He will ca.re for them, ready still 
to call for their sacrifice if higher things demand, 
but showing you His Christhood in one of its most 
precious sides as He sympathizes with those interests 
which make so large a portion of His brethren's lives. 
Even in the great question of the soul's forgiveness 
for its sins, does there not sometimes come misgiving? 
Does it not sometimes seem as if men thought that 
God would be greater and more awful if He did not 
stoop to forgive ? Who are we that He should care 
for us? What is it whether we enjoy or suffer, that 
the Infinite Goodness and Happiness should go out 
of its way to save us from the consequence of our 



292 THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST. 

iniquity ? The heathen deity who sits sublime and 
watches while things take their resistless course, 
Nature pitiless in all her bounty, these sometimes 
seem the types of grandeur, and all that is different 
from them has a touch of weakness in it. Then 
comes Christ with His revelation to the heart which 
listens and is convinced. "- Lo ! " He saj^s, '' God does 
care for man, and is most God when He cares most 
tenderly. Lo ! pity is not weakness : it is strength." 
He lets us see the purpose of forgiveness, which is 
not release from punishment and pain, but entrance 
into life, and shows us how well worth forgiving man 
is, by showing us what man forgiven may become. 

Thus everywhere Christ comes to man's commonest 
and most familiar needs, and there, in them, bears 
witness of His power. How shall that make us 
think of Him ? Shall it make Him seem less than 
God's anointed ? '' As for this man, we know whence 
He is ; but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth." 
That will depend, as I think that we have seen, on 
how man seems to us. If he is mysterious in his 
very nature, then the mystery of the Christ is not 
lost' in the Christ's entrance on man's homeliest 
estate. Did those Jews know of Jesus, as they said 
they did, '' whence He was " ? Ought not His birth 
and life among them to have so revealed to them the 
essential wonder of birth and life that they should 
have willingly accepted His and stood in awe before 
their own? Is not this the whole lesson of the In- 
carnation, that when man is himself God can dwell 
in him ? 

If you knew the hand which fed the child Shake- 



THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST. 293 

speare, would you not honor it? Would 5'ou not 
know that to have been allowed to minister to the 
humblest wants of that sublime nature was a privi- 
lege which king or queen need not refuse ? It was 
to help to make possible Hamlet and Macbeth; and 
the real wonder of Shakespeare was not that he was 
Shakespeare, but that he was man. Be sure that you 
mount up to Christ by gaining His view of yourself, 
and that you do not drag Him down to yourself by 
your selfishness, and then you may freely claim Him 
in your commonest life, and bid Him do, and honor 
Him for doing, the work which He craves and delights 
in when He says, ''I am among you as He that 
serveth." 

I know full well how all this doctrine may appear, 
how it has often appeared, to many men ; how it has 
seemed as if we made for ourselves a Christ out of 
our own necessities, and said, '' He must be this, 
because this is what I need." People have said, 
'^ Ah, you believe in Christ because you want to. 
He comes not out of the certainty of demon- 
strated truth, but out of your own fancies con- 
cerning your own wants. You think you must have 
Him, and so you bid Him be." I know the delusion 
which those words expose, and yet I gladly accept 
the account which those words give of at least one of 
the ways in which Christ comes to the soul. It is 
because the soul needs Him that it finds Him. There 
is no revelation from the sky which could bring Him 
to our knowledge if the heart with conscious want 
did not demand the very salvation which He brings. 
I will be studiously on my guard not to mistake the 



294 THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST. 



cravings of my nature for the voice of the coming 
Christ, but I will not silence those cravings of my 
nature when they welcome the coming Christ, — I 
will bid them speak, I will listen for God's answer to 
them, and when Christ does come it shall make the 
witness of His coming perfectly conclusive and com- 
plete that it is not merely in the clouds of heaven, 
but through the worn and torn avenues of my con- 
scious human necessities, that He comes. 

Has He come so to you, my friend? Do you 
believe in Jesus Christ to-day, not simply because of 
the great splendid evidences which all the world can 
read, not merely because of the trumpet-voice .of 
Christian history and the convincing splendor of the 
life of miracle, but because of the w^itness which He 
has borne to your own soul in His answer to your 
soul's own needs? Do you believe in Him because 
when you wanted comfort He comforted you, 
and when you wanted wisdom He enlightened you, 
and when you were a coward He made you brave, and 
when you were weak He made you strong? Do 
not distrust that evidence. It is good proof. When 
Christ comes out of Nazareth it is not Christ that is 
dishonored, but Nazareth that is glorified. Let your 
whole nature glow and burn with the mysterious 
capacity wdiich it has shown to need and long for 
Christ, and then accept Christ because, first having 
made your nature fit to long for Him, He has then 
rejoiced to satisfy your nature with Himself. 

Other truths about Christ there are which we will 
preach on other days. I have tried to preach this 
truth to-day, that no familiarity of religion, no pres- 



THE NEARNESS OF CHKIST. 295 

entation of it as a regulative force, no offer by Christ 
of Himself as the friend of daily life, must seem to 
us to depreciate the power of our salvation or make 
it appear to us other than the touch of God. There 
will come to you hours of great exaltation ; you Avill 
go up to mountain-tops of vision. The Divine Voice 
will speak to you out of the sun and out of the 
cloud. Those will come in their time as it is best. 
But let no experience and no expectation of them 
make you careless or distrustful when out of com- 
monest things, out of daily tasks, and daily difficulties, 
and daily joys, and the simplest needs of your nature, 
and the most domestic familiarities of life, God speaks 
to you and offers you His Son. Know His voice so 
truly that you cannot mistake it from whatever un- 
expected quarter it may speak. Watch for the 
Divine Light so anxiously that you may never say 
that it is not divine from whatever humblest quarter 
it may shine. 



XVII. 

PRAYER. 

"If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask 
what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." — John xv. 7. 

In one shape or another the religious question 
which gives thoughtful, religious people the most 
trouble is probably the question of Prayer. We 
cannot doubt that it has always been so-. We feel 
sure that in every condition of religion, dov/n to the 
lowest, in which men are moved to supplicate God 
at all, the struggle between the two feelings, be- 
tween the instinct that God must hear and answer, 
and the doubt whether God can hear and answer, has 
been always going on. It is not a struggle of our 
days alone ; it is not a question which certain pecul- 
iar tendencies of our time have brought out. It is 
as old as David ; nay, as old as Job, as old as all 
religion. 

Is it possible for the great First Cause to lay Him- 
self open to appeals which originate in human wills, 
and so to yield to causes behind Himself in governing 
his action? You see our very jealousness for God's 
honor comes and lays itself across the path by which 
our timid souls are creeping to His merc3^-seat. The 
very greatness which tempts us to trust Him seems to 
forbid us to ask Him. Is prayer, then, all a delusion ? 
Is it a mere arrangement for a soul's own discipline. 



PRAYEK. 297 

incapable of influence upon the action of God ? Is 
there a possible reality about it ? We cannot help 
feeling that in trying to give answers to these ques- 
tions, Christians too often bewilder their minds with 
hopeless speculations, instead of going to Christ and 
seeing just what He has said about this hard subject 
of prayer. Let us take up one verse of His this 
afternoon, and see how clearly He deals with the 
whole difficulty, how exactly He tells us what we 
want to know. 

Christians, who long to pray, but sometimes 
almost fear to ; who are distressed by doubting just 
how far prayer may go, just how confidently it is 
to expect its answer ; around whose closets natural 
law and the majesty of the Almighty seem to gather 
with an oppressiveness that almost stifles the half- 
formed petitions, — let us come to Jesus and beg as 
the Disciples did, " Lord, teach us to pray," and 
see what He means when He tells us in reply, "• If 
ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall 
ask what ye will, and it shall be done." 

"If ye abide in me." What is it to abide in 
Christ? That is the first question in settling the 
qualities of him who can hope to pray successfully. 
The phrase becomes familiar to us in the Xew Testa- 
ment; and indeed we might find a parallel that would 
explain it to us in several of the different kinds of 
relation that exist between human beings. For in- 
stance, we should all understand, I think, wliat was 
meant if it were said of a young and dutiful child 
that he abode or lived in his parents. The child's 
earliest years are so completely hidden behind the 



i98 PRAYER. 

parents' life that you do not look upon him altogether 
as a separate individuality, but rather as almost a 
part of the same organism, one expression of the 
parents' nature ; so tliat, just as the arm, the tongue, 
the eye, are several media for the expression of the 
parents' will, in tlie same vray, though in a higher 
degree, the child is another limb of the parental life 
and utterance of the parental nature. The law 
owns this, and reaches the child only tlirough the 
parent. We all expect children's opinions on mat- 
ters of religion, of politics, of taste, to be echoes of 
their parents'. The father acts and thinks for the 
child. The child acts and thinks in the father. 
Thus, until the time when the gradual departure 
takes place, the child's home is not merely in his 
father's house, but in his father's character, — he 
abides in him. 

Or take another case : the army and the common 
soldier "abide in" the general. Tlie army does 
what its general does. As an army, it has no 
thought or action out of him. It moves when he 
moves, stops moving when he stops moving. We 
say the general has gone here and there, and we 
mean the army has gone. It lays aside all faculty 
of decision, or rather contributes it all to him, and 
he with the combined responsibility of the great 
multitude upon him goes his way, carrying their liTe 
in his. There is perhaps the most complete and 
absolute identification of two lives which it is possi- 
ble to conceive of. 

Now, we can get probably a better idea from these 
examples than we could from any careful defini- 



PRAYEK. 299 

tions of wliat it is for a human soul to ''abide in 
Christ." The child abides in the father; the 
soldier abides in the general. For the soul to abide 
in Christ, then, is for it to be to Him what the child 
is to the father, what the soldier is to his captain. 
It is for it to give up its will to His as completely as 
the surrenders of will are made in the family and in 
the army. Nay, the ''giving up of will" does not 
entirely express it, because that implies something 
like reluctance and resistance. But the child has no 
will except the father ; and the soldier's will is so 
entirely at one with his captain's upon the great 
general purpose of the war, which is victory, that he 
rejoices to accept that captain's will in all details and 
make it his own. Christ is at once our Father and 
our Captain. Perfect affection and perfect loyalty 
combine to shape our attitude towards Him ; and the 
result of the two is that complete identification of 
our life with His life by which we " abide in Him." 

Jesus Himself uses another figure for the same 
idea : " The Branch cannot bear fruit of itself except 
it abide in the vine." There is the same identifica- 
tion of life, the same complete dependence, and the 
same transferrence of responsibility. 

In this truth of the Believer's " abiding in Christ " 
there are two notions involved, — of Permanence and 
of Repose. It is not a mere temporary harmony of the 
human nature with the divine. Not a mere glancing 
of the Christ-life upon the man-life in some of its 
higher and more spiritual promontories, but it is an 
assured, final entrance of the human into the divine. 
It is the entire abandonment and destruction of 



300 PRAYER. 

man's old homes to take up with and settle down in 
new. The man who abides in Christ stands on the 
heights of his new life, and strains his sight forward 
into eternity, and sees but one will, which is both 
his and Christ's, which is his reconciled to and swal- 
lowed up in Christ's, flowing straight on, beyond 
his sight, towards the Endless End. Its permanence 
comes from the fact that it is a new life, an entire 
change ; the soul's deliberate removal from the 
kingdom of earth into the Kingdom of Heaven, 
before his entrance upon which a man '' must be 
born again." 

With this permanence comes Repose, Rest, an in- 
ternal harmony Avith a man's self, answering to the 
external harmony with Christ, that freedom of the 
spiritual nature for its best activity, which Christ 
calls "' His Peace." There is a new tranquilUty which 
is not stagnation, but assurance, when a life thus 
enters into Christ. It is like the hushing of a million 
babbling, chattering mountain streams as they ap- 
proach the sea and fill themselves with its deep pur- 
poses. It is like the steadying of a lost bird's 
quivering wings when it at last sees the nest and 
quiets itself with the certainty of reaching it, and 
settles smoothly down on level pinions to sweep 
unswervingly towards it. It is like these to see the 
calm of a restless soul that discovers Christ and rests 
its tired wings upon the atmosphere of His truth, 
and so abides in Him as it goes on towards Him. 

It is strange how such a truth, deeply realized, 
purifies religion, how it clears out of the way with 
quiet, unnoticed evaporation, removing them, not as 



PRAYER. 301 

the wind removes clouds, but as the sun removes 
them, — all the morbid and perplexing questions that 
have blinded the spiritual sight. To the soul that 
does not " abide in Christ " Christianity seems either 
a very heartless system on the part of God or a 
very selfish system on the part of man. Tlie Gos- 
pel is to be obeyed. Why ? Is it that Christ may 
be glorified? Tliat is very heartless in God, man 
says, to shape tliis hard law of life only for His and 
His Son's glory. Is it that the obeyer's soul may be 
saved ? That is a very low and selfish motive for the 
Christian, — just to get out of the region of unhap- 
piness, just to get into the realm of joy. But 
''enter into Christ" and the difficulty is gone. We 
are no longer servilely and blindly doing His unknown 
commandments, nor mercenarily seeking our own 
good. The two natures are harmonized ; our wills 
unite. We want the world converted, and sin cast 
out, and the Kingdom of Holiness set up. He is 
glorified when our souls are saved. The salvation 
of our souls is in glorifying Him. All is changed 
when we are made the confidants and sharers as well 
as the mere agents of His purposes. This is the 
transfer, the advance which He Himself describes a 
few verses later in the chapter, when He says, " Hence- 
forth I call you not servants ; for the servant knoweth 
not what his Lord doeth : but I have called you 
Friends ; for all things which I have received of my 
Father I have made known unto you." This is what 
is meant by " If ye abide in me." 

And ''If mj^ words abide in you." This is the 
second condition of the successful prayer. The 



802 PRAYER. 

keeping for continual and instinctive reference of the 
definite, explicit teacliings and commands of Christ. 
We can see, I thinly, why this second condition must 
necessarily be added to the first. Tliat first relation, 
— the abiding of the soul in Christ,- — if it were perfect, 
would be enough. An entire sympathy between you 
and the Lord would make it impossible for you to do 
any tiling but just what was the Lord's will. But 
that first relation, that sympathy is not complete; 
it is very imperfect and unreliable here. Therefore 
God cannot trust to man's oneness with Him to ensure 
man's always unerringly discovering His will. He 
must make some positive and definite announcement 
of it. He must give him not merely His ow^n spirit, 
but His own words. The soul's abiding in Jesus 
will make him ready to accept Jesus' words, and then 
the words will come to lead the soul into a deeper 
and deeper abiding-place in its Saviour. This gives 
us the true place of the Bible, its true relation to 
the more immediate communion of the human soul 
with God's, where no printed book or spoken word 
intrudes. And this is perfectly carried out into the 
two illustrations that we used. The father trusts 
his child and the captain trusts his soldier, in virtue 
of the identification of their lives, to do his will en- 
tirely ; but it is by reason of the imperfect sympathy 
which hinders the inferior from perfectly appre- 
hending the superior's will that the father and the 
captain must have codes of government and issue 
orders of the day for their subordinates. 

The Bible is a temporary expedient; the oneness 
of the soul with God is an essential and eternal 



PRAYER. 303 

necessity. The one we ma}- outgrow, the other 
we can never do without. In Heaven w^e shall need 
no Bibles. Who will be patient to look down upon 
a page and read that God is Love, when the Eternal 
Love is burning there upon the throne, and our full 
eyes may look into His depths unhindered? Who 
w411 want to read the faithfulness of Jesus when the 
'' Faithful and True," with feet of brass and holding 
the stars in His unchanging hands, stands there before 
us in the midst of the candlesticks? We hold our 
Bible tightly, full of the precious words of God; but 
who does not hold them, ready to let them go when 
the great " Word " Himself shall take us perfectly into 
His sympathy to abide in Him forever ? 

But now, for the present, we hold them. We 
must not merely abide in Him, but have His words 
abide in us. I will tell you how this last clause 
seems to me. There seems to be a sort of faintly 
sketched picture of a solemn council-room in the 
heart of the true Christian, around which sit in beau- 
tiful and lioly chairs the judges of our lives, — the 
words of Jesus. Every act that the true Christian 
does he compels to pass upon its way from concep- 
tion to execution through that council-room, and 
every word of Jesus sitting in its place must give its 
sanction to every act. No deed must go forth that 
cannot carry the approval of every utterance of Him 
to w^hom the Christian has given up his will. We 
do not trust even our personal feelings for our master 
as a final test. So long as we have His words, telling 
us what we must do and what we must not do, we 
fear the distortions of feeling that we know too well, 



304 PRAYER. 

and rejoice in that judgment-room within us where 
the words of Christ are throned. 

You see, then, what is added when we are told tliat 
we must not only abide in Christ, but also have His 
words abide in us. We are to keep them as test- 
words to try our lives by, and see how deeply we 
abide in Him. '' If ye love me, keep my command- 
ments." Is not that Christ's own summary of the 
two conditions ? He in whom they are both fulfilled 
is the full and symmetrical Christian, keeping affec- 
tion always true by obedience, and obedience always 
fresh and glowing with sympathetic love. This is to 
abide in Christ, and to have His words abide in us. 

And now what have we reached ? It is this full 
and symmetrical Christian, — the perfect man in 
Christ, — of whom Christ says that he '' shall ask 
what he will and it shall be done unto him." Does 
it seem strange, the large, unconditional promise? 
The simple question is, *•' What will this regenerated 
man, this child in perfect sympathy with his father, 
this Christian abiding in Christ, — what will he ask 
of God ? Evidently he will ask, he can ask, nothing 
but Christly things in Christly ways. His will has 
become an echo of the will of Christ. What can he 
desire that Christ does not desire ? Try to put upon 
his lips a prayer that God Avould not grant, — a prayer 
of presumption, or uncharitableness, or self-indul- 
gence, and it drops off. It Avill not stay upon, it 
Avill not go up to heaven from, lips like those. He 
cannot pray it so long as he abides in Christ. He 
must go outside of his abiding-place ; he must sepa- 
rate his will from his Lord's, before his mind can 



PRAYER. 305 

shape or his mouth utter an unchristian prayer. 
True, the most earnest Christian may err about the 
will of God. He may pray for sunshine when it is 
the will of God that it should rain. He may ask f < : 
comfort when it is God's will that he should suffc. 
But this can only come in superficial things. In the 
one central thing of all — his OAvn spiritual life — he 
cannot err. He knows that ''this is the will of God, 
even his sanctification." He may cry out for that 
with perfect certainty ; and for all other things, if he 
prays as every Christian ought, submitting his prayer 
to God's revision, " Nevertheless, not my will but 
Thine be done ; " then, whether the special blessing 
that he asked is sent or not, the larger petition with 
which he covered in and included his lesser one is 
surely answered. The thing he really '' willed " is 
"done unto him." 

Or take the other condition. Can he in whom the 
words of Christ abide pray an unanswered prayer? 
God leaves unanswered among earnest prayers only 
those which His own character and plans make it im- 
possible for Him to answer. And can the soul that 
tests every petition by the Bible pray any such 
prayers as those ? Can he in whom this word of 
Christ abides — '' Seek ye first the Kingdom of God 
and His righteousness" — go on clamoring with 
miserable mercenary prayers for houses and lands, 
for food and drink, as if they were the first things to 
seek? Can he in whom this word of Christ abides — 
"I say unto you, love your enemies" — torture his 
lips into uncharitable and malignant petitions, be- 
seeching God for vengeance on his foes ? Or he in 



30G PRAYER. 

whom this everlasting word of Christ abides, — ''In 
the world ye shall have tribulations," — can you con- 
ceive of him as vexing God with querulous suppli- 
cations to be released from suffering, and not de- 
lighting God with holy petitions that he may be 
brave and patient under it, that he may be purified 
and made perfect by it? Oh, my dear friends, 
how many of our prayers must go unprayed, if we 
sent them up to the mercy-seat through that judg- 
ment-chamber where the words of Jesus sit I How 
many times we have complained that our prayer 
brought no answer, when it was a prayer we never 
could have prayed unless we first drove out every 
word of Christ from its abiding-place within us I Is 
there a Christian here who can declare before God 
that he ever prayed to God in perfect submission 
to Christ's will, in perfect conformity to Christ's 
words, and got no answer ? Not here ; not in all the 
world ; not in all the ages ! 

This is the meaning of Christ's promise : The true 
Christian must always have an answer to his prayer, 
because he can never pray a prayer incapable of 
answer. Does it sound like a mere truism ? Is it 
an insignificant conclusion that we have reached? 
Does it amount to nothing to say that Christ will 
grant all good men's prayers because they cannot 
ask anything that He is not willing and anxious to 
grant already? Surely there is no weakening of the 
thought of prayer in this. How would you strengthen 
it ? Would you say that the good man may ask of 
God things that He is unwilling to bestow, and gain 
them ? But why is God unwilling to bestow them 



PKAYER. 307 

except for one of t\YO causes : either that the giv- 
ing of them would injure the soul that asks them, or 
that it would interfere with some plan that the 
divine wisdom has shaped for the universe at large ? 
In either case can you conceive of a true and filial 
prayer demanding the unwilling boon? Grant that 
the Christian has the power, will he use it? Must 
he not in using it depart out of that harmony with 
Christ which is the very condition of his success, 
cease to abide in Him, and so fail of the dangerous 
gift that he desires ? 

You see it all when you look at a child asking a 
father for some benefit. Prayer is no fiction between 
those eager lips that beg and those other gracious 
lips that cordially bestow the boon. There is no 
sham in that petition. The Avhole scene is purely, 
beautifully real. The blessing really comes in 
answer to the prayer. But it is not necessary that 
the idea of a conquered reluctance should come in. 
The father wants to give as much as the child wants 
to receive. The child, if he be truly dutiful and in- 
telligent, will desire to receive nothing that the 
father does not want to give. It will be only as he 
abides in his father, and his father's words abide in 
him, that he will expect that he can ask what he 
will, and it shall be given unto him. 

This is imperfect. Take the perfect scene of 
prayer, the Son of God praying to His Father : was 
there a conflict of wills? Was there a conquering of 
reluctance ? Nay, that is carefullj^ excluded. Al- 
though the Son abides perfectly in the Father, so 
that He and His Father are one, and therefore He 



308 PRAYER. 

surely may ask what He will, " and it shall be done," 
yet the very chance of His will conflicting with the 
Father's will is anticipated, and the superiority of the 
Father's will provided for. " Not my will but thine be 
done." In the desert, on the mountain, by the table, 
wherever He prayed, there was the picture of the per- 
fect prayer. Towards the condition of the praying 
Christ all our pra3^ers strive, and are to be measured by 
the nearness with which they approach that union of 
perfect sympathy with God and perfect submission to 
God with which He laid hold of the divine willing- 
ness to help. 

The result ol our whole study of Prayer to-day 
seems to be this, that it involves far more than we 
ordinarily think, — a certain necessary relation be- 
tween the soul and God. The condition of prayer is 
personal ; it looks to character. How this rebukes our 
ordinary slipshod notions of what it is to pray ! God's 
mercy-seat is no mere stall set by the vulgar roadside, 
where every careless passer-by may put an easy hand 
out to snatch any glittering blessing that catches 
his eye. It stands in the holiest of holies. We can 
come to it onl}^ through veils and by altars of puri- 
fication. To enter into it, we must enter into God. 

O my dear friends, there is not one of us that can 
live without praying. We all know that. But pray- 
ing is not " saying our prayers," not shuffling through 
a few petitions morning and evening, nor clamoring 
with imperious voices before God's presence, setting 
up our own will, however earnestly and vehemently, 
against His. '* Lord teach us to pray," we ask ; and 
the first answer is, " If ye abide in me and my 



PRAYER. 309 

words abide in you," then ye shall pray successfully. 
We must be Christians first. We must enter into the 
new life, and, once there, Prayer will grow wonder- 
fully easy ; as easy to pray on earth, " Lord Jesus, 
have mercy upon me," as it will be to praise in 
heaven, " Thou art worthy, O Lord, for thou hast 
redeemed us." 



XVIII. 
THE ETERNAL HUMANITY. 

" I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First 
and the Last." — Rev. xxii. 13. 

With all the other deficiencies in our ordinary 
Christianity, every earnest Christian thinker is con- 
tinually thrown back to feel that its fundamental 
defect is an imperfect knowledge of its great head 
and centre, Christ. Christ is Cliristianity. He does 
not merely teach, He is the religion which we hold. 
To know it, we must know Him. He is not merely 
the revealer, but the truth. Hence comes the high 
ambition to know more of the Saviour in order that 
our share of the salvation may be more complete. 
Who is He ? What is there in Him that fits Him for 
His work? When did His work begin? By what 
continual power does it go on? The New Testament 
comes in answer to these questions to tell us all that 
we may know of Christ. This verse from the Revela- 
tion of St. John may help us to much knowledge of 
Him, and I invite you as Christians, this afternoon, 
to a short study of the truths wdiich it contains. 

For the verse comprises Christ's declaration of 
Himself. He asserts His own eternity. He is the be- 
ginning of all things and the end of all things, — an 
eternity of the past, an eternity of the future. His 
power for man resides in these. His two eternities. 



THE ETERNAL HUMANITY. 311 

eacli of which, His life as Alpha and His life as 
Omega, has its peculiar benefits for us. 

And remember, at the very outset, what such a 
declaration must include. Christ says, '• I am 
Eternal." Now, that must mean not merely tliat He 
has existed and shall exist forever, but also that in 
the forevers of the past and the future He is eter- 
nally Christ; that the special nature in which He 
relates Himself to us as Saviour never had a begin- 
ning and shall never have an end. Now, what is that 
special nature ? — Christ I The word includes to our 
thought sucli a Divinity as involves tlie human ele- 
ment. Clirist is the Divinely human, the humanly 
Divine. It is the Deity endowed with a peculiar 
human sympatliy, showing by a genuine brotherliood 
the experience of man. Tliat is to say, there are 
t^yo words: God and Man. One describes pure 
deity, the other pure humanitj^ Christ is a word 
not identical with either, but including botli. It is 
the Deity in which the Humanity has part ; it is the 
Humanity in which the Deity resides. It is that 
special mediatorial nature wdiich has its ow^n double 
wearing of both, the ability to stand between and 
reconcile the separated manhood and divinity. 

Keep this in mind, and then see what it will mean 
when we are told that this Christ nature, this divine 
human, has existed forever. Are we not in the habit 
of talking as if the redemption whicli called for an 
anointed Redeemer were a late thought in the uni- 
versal history? Untold ages after the dateless time 
when God began to be. His almighty word was 
spoken, and a new world with a new race to live on 



312 THE ETEENAL HUMANITY. 

it shaped itself out from the void. In that new 
world a new experiment of moral life brought a 
catastrophe unknown before, to meet whose terrible 
demands the great Creator came Himself and took the 
nature of this last creature living in His last creation. 
God was made man, and Christ the God-man was 
made manifest before the worlds. Here we make 
man, you see, a late thing in the history of the 
universe ; and how is it possible, then, that Christ, 
who is God with the element of human sympathy, 
should be eternal? And just here, as it seems to me, 
there comes in one of the key-passages of the Bible, 
which we are always far too apt to overlook. It is 
that verse in Genesis : " In the image of God created 
He man." God made man like Himself. Ages before 
the incarnation made God so wonderfully in the 
imacre of man, the creation had made man in the 
image of God. 

Now, if we can comprehend that truth at all, it 
must be evident that before man was made the man- 
type existed in God. In some part of His perfect 
nature there was the image of what the new creation 
was to be. Already, before man trod the garden in 
the high glory of his new Godlikeness, the pattern of 
the thing he was to be existed in the nature of Him 
who was to make him. Before the clay was fashioned 
and the breath was given, this humanity existed in 
the Divinity; already there was a union of the 
Divine and human ; and thus already there was the 
eternal Christ. 

Stop here one minute, and see how this exalts the 
human nature that we wear. In tlie midst of the eter- 



THE ETERNAL HUMANITY. 313 

nity of God, there bursts forth into being the new life 
of man. What sliall we say of it? Is it just a creat- 
ure of the moment wliich witnesses its birth ? Is it 
just another of the world's ephemera, with a little 
longer span of life than some of its tinier brethren? 
Is it a new type of being made to be born and die ? 
What if this other trutli be true ? What if the type 
of this life I live were part and parcel of the ever- 
lasting Godhead ? What if it be the peculiar glory 
of one of the persons of that Godhead that He has 
worn forever, bound with His perfect deity, the per- 
fect archetype and pattern of this humanity of mine ? 
AVhat if there be a Christ who is the Alpha, the 
beginning of all things; who only brought out into 
exhibition when He came in human flesh that genu- 
ine human brotherhood wliich had been in him for- 
ever? At once is not my insignificance redeemed? 
Every power in me grows dignified and worthy, 
catching some of tlie importance of the eternal type 
it represents. My love, — poor, feeble, grovelling 
thing, that licks the dust and twines itself round 
rubbish, — lo, it is one with, it is capable of being 
like, the perfect affection with which from all eter- 
nity the holy Christ has loved all holy things ! M}^ 
indignation, that blazes its strength away in all sorts 
of impotent furies, has a sublime identity with the 
sacred wrath which burns in Christ's bosom when 
He looks at sin. My hope is the dimmed copy of His 
power of eternal prophecy. I go through my nature, 
and I trace out in these blurred and dimmed lines 
the copies whose originals are all in Him. Here is 
the tragedy of human life, dear friends When the 



314 THE ETERNAL HUMANITY. 

swine wallows in his mire, or the butterfly trifles his 
sunny life away, it is a base or little nature given up 
to base or little ends. Wlien you or I live the lives 
of brutes or butterflies we are taking that man- 
nature which is eternal, whose image and plan was 
a part of Godhead through all the infinite forever of 
the past ; we are taking that man-nature which 
copies on earth the uncreated life of Christ in Heaven, 
nay, (shall w^e say it ?) we are taking Christ and 
making Him contemptible with the drunkenness of 
low debauchery, or setting Him in the idle whirl and 
meaningless waste of fashionable folly. Oh, with 
what shame and reverence we should carry through 
the world this human nature if we really knew that 
it did not begin to be with Adam, but existed for- 
ever in the eternal Christ I 

I hold, then, that the Incarnation w^as God's com- 
mentary on that verse in Genesis, " In the image 
of God created He man." Yes, '' from the begin- 
ning" there had been a second person in the Trinity, 
— a Christ, whose nature included the man-type. In 
due time this man-type was copied and incorporated 
in the special exhibition of a race. There it degen- 
erated and went off into sin. And then the Christ, 
who had been what He was forever, came and brought 
the pattern and set it down beside the degenerate 
cop3^, and wrought men's hearts to shame and peni- 
tence when they saw the everlasting type of what 
they had been meant to be, walking among the mis- 
erable shows of what they were. 

If this truth be so, then we cannot but feel that 
there is much in it to enable us to feel rightly with 



THE ETERNAL HUMANITY. 315 

regard to every one of the new theories which 
look to a confusion and a loss of the distinctive type 
of manhood. We have all had our interest excited 
by the apparent tendencies of modern science 
towards a depreciation of what has always been 
considered the unshared honor of humanity. Wise 
men come forward and tell us of a course of structural 
development, wherein man becomes not a new cre- 
ation, for whom a new word was spoken from the 
creative lips, a new gesture made by the creative 
hand, but merely the present completion of the 
natural progress of lower natures working up thus 
far by some process of selection whose law is resident 
within itself. The gorilla in his generations is seen 
climbing through the gradations of a more and more 
perfect apehood, to attain the summit of his life in 
man. '' Man is in structure one with the brutes." 
" All are but coordinated terms of nature's great pro- 
gression from the formless to the formed ; from the 
inorganic to the organic ; from blind force to con- 
scious intellect and will." These are the theories 
that men are talking of. However they differ in de- 
tails, the one first effect of all of them must be, the 
depreciation of the individuality of man, the loss of 
his special type of being, and inevitably the confu- 
sion of his human responsibility in the intricate 
r.eries of the apes. What am I ? Anything but one 
link in an endless chain, that over self-moved wheels 
runs on forever, working out a progress so mechani- 
cal that in it morality is lost? What am I? Only a 
higher attainment of these poor, dumb brutes, digging 
the earth a little deeper for the roots I am to eat, piling 



316 THE ETEHNAL. HUMANITY* 

a little more delicately the den I am to live in, cry- 
ing a little more articulately the pain or pleasure 
that I feel ? And then suppose I go to Revelation to 
see what it can say about these things. Suppose I 
find there this sublime truth, that the man-type for 
which I am so anxious has had an eternal existence 
as a part and parcel of the Deity ; that, however this 
manifestation of it has been reached, there is mani- 
fest in every man the image of a pattern-life that is 
in God. Let me carry away from Revelation the su- 
preme truth of the eternal humanity of Christ, and 
then my moral life, my reverence for the nature 
which I share, my high ambition after its perfection, 
all this is unimpaired. Let science sliow me my af- 
finities with the lower life : a mightier hand points 
me to my connections with the higher. I go back 
beyond the first rudiment that curious hands have 
found buried in the slime of formless Avorlds ; I go 
back beyond the forming of the world in which man 
was to live, back to the beginningless Al])ha of all 
being, and lo, in Him I find the eternal pattern after 
wdiich my nature was to be fashioned, the eternal 
perfection which my nature was to seek. 

But the highest importance of this truth of Christ's 
past eternity must always be to the great Christian 
doctrine of the Atonement. You know what that 
doctrine is. It tells us that when man fell from 
holiness to sin, there appeared in the wliole universe 
only one nature which had in itself a fitness to un- 
dertake the w^ork of reconciliation and restoral. 
Only one nature stood forth saying, " Lo, I come ! " 
Christ the incarnate God assumed the work and 



THE ETERNAL HUMANITY. 317 

manifested the one necessary fitness in His union of 
the divine and human natures. Then comes the 
question, When did tliat fitness of the Christ be- 
gin? Was it a nature given Him when He was born 
of Mary ? Was it a new assumption of an element of 
life which had before been wliolly unfamiliar ? If so, 
the atonement becomes — what? A late expedient 
for patching up the breach in God's experiment; 
a special provision for an unforeseen catastrophe. 
The precious element of Christ's humanity becomes 
only the tardy and pitiful consequence of human 
sin. But take the deeper view. What if this fit- 
ness of nature were an everlasting thing in Christ, 
only coming to special utterance when He was born 
Jesus the child of the Hebrew Virgin ? What if He 
had borne forever the human element in His Divinity, 
anointed Christ from all eternity? What if there 
had been forever a Saviourhood in the Deity, an 
everlasting readiness which made it always certain 
that, if such a catastrophe as Eden ever came, such 
a remed)^ as Calvary must follow ? Does not this 
deepen all our thoughts of our salvation? Does it 
not teach us what is meant by " the Lamb slain from 
the foundation of the world " ? 

And see how such a truth tallies with all God's 
ways. This natural body of ours has in itself the 
fitness for two sets of processes, — the processes of 
growth and the processes of repair. You keep your 
arm unbroken, and nature feeds it Avith continual 
health, makes it grow hearty, vigorous, and strong, 
rounds it out from the baby's feebleness into the full, 
robust arm of manhood. You break that same arm, 



318 THE ETERNAL HUMANITY. 

and the same nature sets her new efficiencies at work, 
she gathers up and reshapes the vexed and lacerated 
flesh, she bridges over the chasm in the broken 
bone, she restores the lost powers of motion and 
sensation, and beautifully testifies her completeness, 
which includes the power of the Healer as well as 
the Supplier. So it is to me a noble thought, that 
in an everlasting Christhood in the Deity we have 
from all eternity a provision for the exigency which 
came at last, — a provision, not temporary and spas- 
modic, but existing forever, and only called out into 
operation by the occurrence of the need. 

It seems to me that all this must increase the im- 
pressiveness of the thought of the Atonement, both for 
its rejecters and its accepters, and must increase its 
deep solemnity for all who preach it. A man puts 
aside the offer of Salvation by Christ Jesus. What 
is it he rejects? Is it a.sudden thought, a new ex- 
pedient of God? Is it a hurried plan which God has 
made ready on the moment to repair this failure in 
His fallen world ? If this were all, it would be bad 
enough. But when I see a man deliberately raise 
his hand and ward off from his life the operation of 
one part of the divine nature which has been aiming 
at the result of his salvation from eternity, how 
shall I utter the fearfulness of his sin and of his peril ? 
I look back to the untold times before the world 
was made. Then, then, before man was, lo, Christ 
already is, with the provisions of salvation in His 
nature ! Among all other lives His life is unique, for 
it alone contains the fitness to save — if it should ever 
need it — the yet unborn world. I see man spring to 



THE ETERNAL HUMANITY. 319 

life. I see him sin. I see, born of his sinning stock 
and sinning like your fathers, in these late genera- 
tions, you, man in 3'our capacity, man in your 
reality of sin. And then comes forward this Eternal 
Saviour. I see Him lay Kis long-kept mercy on your 
soul, born in these latter days to need it. At last 
the mercy that has waited all through eternity has 
found its purpose. It comes to save you. And if 
you will not be saved, if you turn your poor soul 
away, what can I say but that you are insulting God ? 
What can I do but tremble for you? O my dear 
brother, how shall you esca|)e if you neglect so great 
salvation ? 

And when an earnest soul accepts this everlasting 
Christ, is there not a new glory in his salvation wlien 
he thinks that it has been from everlasting. He 
looks back, and lo, the Saviour was his Saviour before 
the worlds were made ! The covenant to which he 
clings had its sublime conditions written in the very 
constitution of the Godhead. It was not spoken 
first on Calvary ; nay, it did not begin when it was 
told to David, or to Moses, or to poor Adam crushed 
into the dust with his new sinfulness outside the 
garden-gate. Before them all, in the very nature of 
the Deity, was written the prophecy that if ever in 
the unfolding of the ages one poor human soul like 
mine should need salvation, the eternal Christ, bring- 
ing His credential of Eternal Human Brotherhood, 
should come to save it. The ages rolled along ; my 
soul was born, and sinned ; it cried out to be saved, 
and lo, Christ came ! What is there left for me to do 
but cling to Him with a love strong as His precious 



320 THE ETERNAL HUMANITY- 

promises and a faith firm as His Everlasting Saviour- 
ship ? 

Let these be the lessons which we gather up as we 
think upon the Christ of the eternal past. He is 
the Alpha of our faith. See what it means. It is 
the Truth of an eternal manhood in the Godhead. 
It teaches us the glory of this human life wc wear 
as being a thing whose tj^pe and pattern was eternal, 
and it teaches us the magnitude of the grace which 
saves us as being the necessary effort of one part of 
the uncreated Deity. He who has learned all the 
great lesson of this Christ the Alpha must be filled 
with a sublime reverence for his own humanity, 
must reverence it and keep it pure and sacred as a 
holy thing; and he must lay hold with a sublime 
confidence on that redemption which he sees stretch- 
ing back and anchoring itself in the uncaused pur- 
poses and qualities of God. 

And now, if the term ''Alpha" asserts a past eternity 
for Christ, it remains for us to go on and see how 
the other term " Omega" declares for Him an eternity 
in the future. He is not merely the beginning, but the 
end ; not only the first, but the last ; not merely 
there has always been, but there shall always be, a 
Divine Human in the Godhead. This, too, is a truth 
which we are liable to forget. As we think the mar- 
vellous nature of the Saviour began in the manger, 
so we sometimes feel as if its elements were sundered 
in the last agony of the cross. Practically a great 
many of us believe in a Trinity only for thirty-three 
years of history. Is not this the value of those 
passages in the New Testament which show us the 



THE ETERNAL HUMANITY. 321 

ascended Saviour speaking or acting still in the same 
genuine humanity which He had worn on earth? 
While Stephen stands waiting for the crash of mur- 
derous stones, "he looks up steadfastly into heaven 
and sees Jesus the Son of Man standing on the right 
hand of God." Saul, prostrate on the Damascus road, 
cries out to the rebuking voice, " Who art thou. 
Lord?" and the answer is, "I am Jesus." And as the 
last Revelation closes and the curtains are gathered 
together, to be opened again only for the final 
coming of the Judge, the last voice that comes forth 
is the voice of Christ, still wearing His human name 
and lineage, '' I Jesus have sent my angel. I am the 
root and offspring of David." What is all this for, 
but to assure us of the everlasting manhood in our 
Lord ? The human hand still weighs ; the human 
voice still speaks ; the human heart still loves. 
He is not only Alpha, but Omega. As all our hope 
shines from the truth that there ever has been, so it 
all centres in the truth that there forever shall be, a 
divine and human Christ. 

The highest use of this truth of Christ, the Omega, 
must be the light which it sheds upon the realities of 
the judgment day. Christ Himself said, " The Father 
judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment 
unto the Son." Why is this? Is it just because He 
has worn, is it not rather because He shall forever 
wear, the human nature which shall make Him fit to 
judge, with the intelligence and sympathy of brother- 
hood, the lives of men? I think that none of us have 
any idea how much we shelter ourselves aw^ay from 
the terrors of the judgment day behind the unfamil- 



322 THE ETERNAL HUMANITY. 

iarity of God. He is so far off, so different from us. 
We cannot really think that He is going to take 
these acts and motives of ours, so different from His, 
and test them accurately, judging us all according 
to the deeds done in the body. Hoy/ can He, — He 
is so different from us, so far away? We do not 
put it to ourselves thus; we do not put it to our- 
selves at all ; but at the bottom this is the way that 
half of us escape the pressure of responsibility. But 
take this truth : What if it be a true man that is to 
judge you, not merely with the far-off memory, 
but with the present consciousness of manhood? 
What if the conviction that awaits us there is no 
other but just that with which brother-man condemns 
our sin? As a pure human look makes our impurity 
blush its own sentence to the guilty face ; as a true 
eye loosens the sophistries of falsehood and makes it 
own its lie ; as our humanity quails before a brother- 
humanity that knows its impulses and temptations 
through and through, — -so shall we quail before the 
Christ. He is to be our judge, passing by His man- 
hood into a knowledge of the sin which in His God- 
hood He w^ill punish. 

And if human sin needs a humanity to judge it, 
do not these weak and struggling efforts of our life 
after goodness crave some sympathy to which they 
can appeal as they go up to judgment ? What ! shall 
I send these poor pretences of holiness up to heaven, 
this ineffective virtue which is not a being good, but 
only a trying to try to be so, — shall I send them 
up to lay themselves against the fiery purity of God 
and be burnt off like spots of blemish from the white 



THE ETEKNAL HUMANITY. 823 

light of His perfectness? Oh, no, give me a man ! 
Though He be perfect. He will know what human im- 
perfection is. Though holiness be divine without a 
struggle in Him, at least He will comprehend what 
my poor struggles mean, and take them as the feeble 
efforts of a soul that is trying, not to purchase heaven, 
but just to praise Him who has already bought it. If 
we look deep enough we ought to feel every time we 
see a little child at night trustfully laying his day's 
life, made up of faint desires, feeble efforts, and con- 
tinual failures, into the hands of God, wdiat a blessed 
thing it is that there is in that God an everlasting 
Christ, an undying humanity, which will take that 
day's life into a brother's hands and count it precious 
with all the intelligence of sympathy. 

And is there not great beauty in this truth of 
Christ, the Omega, as we relate it to the dead ? AVe 
have all lost dear friends out of this world. We 
have all stood upon the margin which was the far- 
thest, which feet untransfigured by death might reach, 
and sent some beloved soul into the unknown world. 
Where have we sent it? To God, we say, bowing 
our heads with resignation. But is there no bleak- 
ness, no f orlornness in our answer ? God is so far off. 
However loving, kind, or wise. He is all God; the 
child we sent Him was all man in his fresh, genuine 
humanit3^ But what if there be a humanity in God 
to Xvhich they go ? What if, since it went out from us, 
that human nature, made first in the image of Christ 
the human, has touched again that perfect nature 
out of which it sprang and finds itself at home ? 
Yes, let me set this Christ eternally in the midst of 



324 THE ETERKAL HUMANITY. 

tho other world, and then the human soul that goes 
there goes to its own. It meets no strangeness on 
the other shore. The human affections just loosened 
on the one side fasten into a completer unity and as^ 
surance on the other. The child is gathered into 
the arms of a fatherhood and knows no strancreness 
or surprise. The brother clasps hands with a newer 
and more trusty brotherhood. We can commit them 
to a God who knows them and is waiting for them. 
They go to Jesus and rest in Him, and wait for us till 
our humanity, made perfect too by death, shall find 
its place beside them. 

This, then, we mean by Christ the Omega, a 
Christ of the everlasting future. Alpha and Omega 
together. His life bridges all eternity, and bearing 
our hope backward fixes it firmly in a security which 
has no beginning ; bearing it f orv/ard crowns it with 
promises that have no end. 

There is another view of this whole subject, which 
we must not enlarge upon, but which we must not en- 
tirely omit. We have spoken of the eternal life of 
Christ as rounding and embracing the great life of 
the world. Is it not true likewise of every single 
Christian experience that Christ is its Alpha and 
Omega, its beginning and its end? A soul enters on 
the higher life, passe3 by the doorway of conversion 
from disobedience to obedience. When does that 
soul find Christ? Is it after it has passed, by some 
power of its own, over the threshold, that there, on 
the inside, it finds the Lord waiting to be its leader? 
Oh, no ! it looks back and cannot tell the moment 
when it was not led by Him. It finds no earliest act 



TH3 ETERNAL HUlVtANITY. 325 

01 its which did not spring out of some yet earlier 
act of His. It came, but He called. It answered, 
but first He spoke. It said, " I w^ill ; " but before that 
He said, '' Wilt thou ? " Yes, we begin, but Christ 
always began before us. As before all humanity the 
primal human was in Him forever, so before all 
Christianity the source and root of all is Christ, 
out of whom all Christianity must flow. He is the 
Alpha of our religious life, antedating every act of 
man's obedience by the eternal promptings of His 
spirit a^id the eternal freeness of His grace. 

And, then, He is its Omega too. As all Christian 
influence has its spring in Christ, so no Christian, 
duty has any result except in Him. We look for- 
ward, dear friends, into the perfectness that is 
promised us, and what is it? Simply that we should 
attain to Him. We may go far in the eternal de- 
A^elopments of holiness, but we can never outgo 
Him. He will be present at the end of every period 
of everlasting progress, to round and close it for us 
and to introduce us to a new one as He introduced 
us to the first, for He is exhaustless. 

Oh that we could learn this truth of an exhaust- 
less Christ. We build our Christian lives out from 
themselves as if Christ were the starting-point from 
which the first joint grew; but every new joint must 
hang itself upon its predecessor in the lengthening 
chain. Oh that we could learn that the life of 
Christ, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and 
the end, stretches from beginning to end under 
this life of ours, and that each of our weak acts, 
instead of fastening itself on the consistency of the 



326 THE ETERKAL. HUMANITY. 

weak acts that have gone before it, ought to pierce 
down and root itself directly and freshly in Him. 
May I plead with you for this ! Strive for continual 
freshness in the higher life. Let it not build itself 
upon itself as mere habit. Let it grow ever out of 
Him as a true life. Let each act distinctly find 
its motive, find its strength in Him. Keep striking 
roots into His personal helpfulness all the way along. 
Make Him your Alpha and Omega ; from Alpha to 
Omega make Him the source of every strength and 
truth your nature seeks. 

"Of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all 
things, to whom be glory forever.'' That is Paul's 
summary of our truth. " Of Him," the Alpha — 
"To Him," the Omega — "Through Him," from 
Alpha to Omega, the Everlasting Christ. The fault 
of our religion is that we do not know enough of 
Christ. May God grant that if we have at all learned 
how He begins the Christian life in man we may go 
on learning new lessons of His wondrous power 
every day, till some day, in the perfect world, we 
learn the perfect lesson of how He can glorify a poor, 
weak, human creature with Himself, and, gathering 
all its culture into Him, take our souls for His and 
be our Omega, our End as He has been our Begin- 
ning, the last complete fulfilment of the last praj^er 
that we shall ever pray, when prayer ceases because 
need has ceased forever! 



XTX. 

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 

*• And the Evening and the Morning were the First Day." 

Genesis i. 5. 

There are many mysteries about the clays of 
Genesis concerning which we need not trouble our- 
selves to-night. But this one verse may guide our 
tlioughts in the direction in which we have come ex- 
pecting that they should be led. It is a noble be- 
ginning of the w^orld's history. It declares of the 
first day that it was made up of an evening and a 
morning. It is not so that we ordinarily reckon the 
world's days. We think of them as moving on from 
morning to evening, opening in freshness, and exu- 
berance, and hope, ripening through hours of activity 
and strength, and at last closing in peaceful exhaus- 
tion, like a fire that has burned itself out to ashes. 
Not such is the first day of all the days. It begins 
with evening, with the fulfilment and completeness 
of the dayless period which had gone before, and 
moves forward into the morning, into the exuber- 
ance, and hope, and freshness of untried ambitions 
and attempts. " Evening and Morning w^ere the first 
day." As time went on, within each of those unities 
which YiQ call days was summed up and pictured this 
truth, that every fulfilment has at its heart the power 
of a new beginning, that nothing is ever finally done, 



328 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 

that all is ever doing, that all the gathering of the 
results of one period's experience has for its purpose 
and natural issue the opening of a new period in 
which that experience shall become effective with 
new form and face. 

It is a depressing doctrine in some moods, that 
nothing is ever done, that all is ever doing, that 
nothing finishes except that it may instantly begin 
again. It is a noble and inspiring doctrine when we 
are at our best, for the absolutely done would be 
the absolutely dead, only the thing to be, stirring at 
its heart, proves that the thing which has been is still 
alive. The evening gathers with its dusky peace ; 
work ceases ; men sit by quiet firesides ; they count 
the gains and losses of the completed hours under the 
quiet stars ; the glare and rush grow dim and still. 
It would be dreadful if it only meant a finished day. 
It is glorious and beautiful because it means a day 
all ready to open ; nay, already opening in this calm 
completion. It is St. Paul's great teaching that 
'' Experience worketh Hope." 

Is not this first day, then, the type of what all days 
of human life should be? Does it not, set there in the 
forefront of history, bear perpetual testimony to the 
truth that no completion is complete or can be truly 
understood, unless it stands in close connection with 
a new commencement? Does it not give us the sug- 
gestion which we want when we are gathered here 
to-night to commemorate the honored completion of a 
long period of faithful work? You close your youth 
and pass on into middle life. You close b}^ and by 
your middle active life and pass on into old age. 



THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 329 

You leave one place where you have lived and move 
into another. You are no longer able to hold one 
form of faith but a more generous faith opens to wel- 
come you. One sort of company in which you have 
been much at home dismisses you, and your life hence- 
forth is to be lived among new faces. You finish a 
piece of work which has long occupied you and take up 
new tools to work on new materials. At last you 
go from life to life, and with one '' longing, lingering 
look behind " resign this " pleasing anxious being." 
In every case it means a vast difference whether you 
join together in your thought only the old beginning 
and this fulfilment, or this fulfilment and the new 
beginning which it makes possible? upon whether the 
morning and the evening or the evening and the morn- 
ing are your day, upon whether the forty years of 
journey as they close are filled more with recollection 
of the Egypt out of which he came or the Canaan into 
which they have brought the traveller. 

If we get at the real heart of the difference it lies 
in this, that he who has lived in the form of an expe- 
rience looks back, while he Avho has entered into the 
substance and soul of an experience looks forward. 
'' The outward man perishes," as Paul says, " but the 
inward man is renewed da}" by day." The perishing 
of a form and method in which we have lived may 
naturally bring a pensive sadness like that which 
always comes to us as we watch a setting of the sun, 
but he who is in the true spirit of the sunset turns 
instantly from the westward to the eastern look. 
The things the day has given him, — its knowledge, 
and its inspirations, and its friendship, and its faith, — 



830 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 

these the departing sun is powerless to carry with it. 
They claim the new day in which to show their power 
and to do their work. Live deeply and you must live 
hopefully. That is the law of life. I should like to 
try to make this clear and real to you by a few illus- 
trations. 

1. Here is a man Avho has believed a truth, and it 
has been clear to him as daylight ; its lines have been 
invariably distinct ; its colors have been always bright 
and vivid. But by and by there comes a change, — 
the lines grow dim and wavering ; the colors become 
faint and blurred ; it is not all as definite and cer- 
tain as it used to be ; the twilight, the evening of 
his faith, has come. Many of you know that of 
which I speak, and you know^ how to two men who 
stand side by side, this evening of their faith, wliich 
comes to both alike, means totally different things. 
To one it means blank unbelief, the melancholy 
death of faith. To the other out of the dimmed ob- 
scured doctrine came a light even richer than it had 
ever shed in its clearest days. The character wdiich 
he had gathered in believing it grew stronger and 
claimed richer truth to satisfy it. His faithfulness 
grew greater while his formal faith grew less. And 
visions came to him with w^onderful assurance of a 
new dawn of faith in which he should believe again 
as he had never believed before. So it has been with 
many of us about the Bible, and about the nature 
and the work of Christ. The evening of some half 
faith which we used to hold has bound itself close to 
the morning of a new and precious and completer 
faith which we know that we shall hold forever. 



THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 331 

2. Or let it be not your faith, but your fortune. The 
evening of your abundant prosperity arrived. The 
darkness gatiiered in about the radiant luxurious 
life which you had lived. No longer did it ^em as 
if the sun shone and the flowers bloomed and the 
seasons came and went for you. You said, '^ It is 
all over. I have had my day." I cannot help hop- 
ing, I cannot help believing, that to some of jou^ 
since you said that, there has come a great surprise. 
What seemed all over has proved to be but just 
begun. The day which you thought you had had, 
you can see now that j^ou had hardly touched. 
Prosperity has come to mean to you another thing. 
Tiie hours in which it meant plenty of monej^, plenty 
of friends, seem now so thin and superficial. To 
work, to help and to be helped, to learn sympatliy 
by suffering, to learn faith by perplexity, to reach 
truth through wonder, behold ! this is what it is to 
prosper, this is what it is to live. You did not really 
begin to live till the darkening of your happiness 
brought you into the knowledge of a happiness which 
can never darken. The evening and the morning 
have been your first day. 

3. I need do no more than just allude to the way in 
which all this is illustrated in the best friendships, 
which make so large a part of our lives. The even- 
ing gathers round a friendship. Some circumstance 
suspends the daily intercourse which has been our 
daily satisfaction and delight. Perhaps the great 
circumstance of death comes in ; and then it is 
proved whether our intercou rsewith that friend of 
ours has been only a thing of outward contacts, or 



832 THE CHUISTIAN MINISTRY. 

a thing of spiritual sympathy. If it has been a 
thing of spiritual sympathy, no circumstance, not 
even death, can break it. It has been gathered, with 
all its past history, into that great, cold hand, onl}^ 
that thence it may be given out into a larger and 
more abundant life. Who of us has not known the 
dead in closer knowledge than he ever knew them 
when they were living? To which of us has there 
not come the certainty, as he stood by some friend's 
dying bed, that his intercourse with that friend and his 
understanding of him was but just beginning; that 
all they had been to each other w^as really precious 
as the foundation and the promise of what they were 
to be to each other in the unseen life forever? The 
eye through its tears looked backward for an instant, 
and then strained its gaze forward with eager curi- 
osity and hope. 

When Jesus was parting from His disciples all this 
was very real to Him. '" These are in the world and 
I come to Thee,'' He said to His Father ; and then to 
His disciples, ''Lo, I am with you always." The 
evening gathered round His active, patient life, but 
the Christian world has always thought of those last 
chapters of His incarnate story, not with reference to 
the past which went before them, but with reference 
to the future for which they prepared ; not as an end, 
but as a beginning. The evening of the Passion and 
the morning of the Resurrection are the first day of 
the Lord's power. It was " expedient that He 
should go away," not because His work was done, 
but in order that He might begin it. 

This is the value of experiences. They are en- 



THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 333 

folded into the transitional moments of life, and 
thence their essential power goes forth to make itself 
felt in new achievement. Such moments are like 
locks upon the stream of time. They lift the boat 
to a new level, and then send it forth, the same boat, 
on the same stream, still to swim on up towards the 
springs among the hills. 

If experiences were not capable of being thus 
enfolded and transmuted, how insignificant they 
W'Ould be. Mere facts without fertility, mere stones, 
not seeds, encumbering the soil. Whether there 
were few or many of them would make but little 
matter ; whether the man died at twenty years old 
or at eighty would be hardly worth the asking. But 
if every experience makes a new element in the great 
complex future, never lost, contributing something 
which it alone can give, then this instinctive desire 
for a fall life, for many experiences, which is in us 
all is natural and right. Then to lose any of the 
legitimate experiences of a full human career is a loss 
for which one will be poorer forever. This is the 
reason of the sadness which no faith in immortality 
can dissipate, belonging to the death of those who 
die in youth, — the sense of untimeliness which we 
cannot reason down. You, a man of sixty, recall to- 
day some friend of your boyhood with whom you 
started life forty years ago. He died at twenty-one. 
The two brave ships had scarcely started side by side 
upon their voyage before one was drawn off by an 
irresistible current out of the broad sunlit stream 
into the mysterious ocean which lies ahvays dark 
beside our human life. What do you think of as 



334 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 

you remember him, and remember what a rich thing 
life has been for you since he departed ? Do you 
not pity him for what he has missed? Whatever 
eternity may bring him he will never know what it 
is to be a human being here upon the earth, first 
twenty-five years old, then thirty, then forty, then 
fifty. Each of these ages is a separate experiencCo 
It means something special. It contributes some- 
thing distinct. That contribution his career and 
character will never get. We do not doubt the com- 
pensations. Something has come to him in the un- 
seen, celestial life which has made up for the loss ; 
but still the loss is there. That special thing he can 
never be. That particular knowledge he can never 
have. But you who have passed through each 
of these regions with sensitive, receptive nature 
have the power of them in you forever. No dream 
of celestial life will ever drown them. No fire of the 
unveiled sight of God will ever burn them out of 
you. Their form is gone past all recovery ; but their 
substance is more thati your possession; it is part of 
you. The experiences, in all the real vitality they 
had, have been enfolded into you, and shall be un- 
folded into the work which you shall do, the life 
which you shall live forever. 

When one thinks of this, he feels like turning 
aside and exhorting the young people to live as fully 
and vividly as possible at every period of life, that 
there may be as much of power as possible to be en- 
folded into the evening of life and opened into the 
eternal morning. It is good to multiply experiences, 
if only they are things of the substance and not 



THE CHRISTIAN" MINISTRY. 66b 

merely of the form. Do not let the certainty that 
you will outgrow any period of life keep you from 
making the most of it and getting the most out of it 
while it lasts. The bee takes the honey and is con- 
tent to leave the flower. Live as abundantly as you 
can. The kind of life is most essential, but the 
amount of life, that, too, is vastly important. The 
direction of the stream is the first thing to care for; 
but when it is pointed the right way, then do all you 
can to increase its volume. The stronger it runs, the 
more it will keep the right direction. 

But now I want to turn a little more closely to 
what is in our minds to-night by asking you to see 
how all that I have said of long-continued life in 
general is especially true of a life long-lived in 
the Christian ministry. There, most of all, experi- 
ences gather themselves into character, and so make 
the material of future living. I should expect this 
to be so, because in its idea the ministry is not merely 
a noble form of human life, — it is identical with 
noble life. All noble life is ministry. All ministry 
is noble life. Every true man is a minister. In pro- 
portion as a mnnister is a true minister, he is a true 
man. Therefore I should expect that in the Christian 
ministry more than anywhere else experiences would 
lichen the life they come to and make great futures 
possible. 

I want to claim that no other occupation of man- 
kind can compare in the richness of its experiences 
with the Ministry of the Christian Gospel. Let me 
sing for a few moments, in the presence of this 
beloved and venerated pastorship, the excellence and 



336 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 

abundance of the life which the Christian pastor 
and priest is given the privilege of living. It ripens 
to its full maturity like a growing tree. It has its 
seed-time and its leaf-time and its bud-time and its 
blossom-time and its fruit-time, and each of them sends 
forward its contribution and makes its preparation 
for that which is to follow. And in each of them the 
minister who lives in it has at least the opportunity 
of the richest relations with the two great sources of 
linman strength, — the divine life on one side of it, 
and the human life upon the other. 

Think of the minister's possible relation, nay, if 
he is trying to be a true minister, his necessary rela- 
tion, to God. God is the granary from which he 
must be immediately fed, the armory from which his 
weapons must be immediately drawn. Study and 
thought and contemplation of divine things are not 
merely his occasional luxury, tliey are his perpetual 
necessity. He must sanctify himself that the people 
may be sanctified through him. He is forever being 
driven in4o the deep waters of humiliation for his 
weakness and of penitence for his sins. He is 
always trying to understand God's will. " What is 
the divine intention in this man's joy, in that man's 
tribulation?" He is kept constantly aware of the 
infinite and perfect purposes by conscious sympathy 
with them. " What God wants he wants." He is 
forever being rebuked and encouraged and enlight- 
ened and disturbed and settled, and then redisturbed 
by influences which come directly out of the heart of 
God into his heart which is laid upon it. Can you 
conceive of a life richer in the profoundest experi- 



337 



ences than that. Beneath the cahTi surface what tem- 
pest and what sunshine, what tumult and what peace! 

And then turn the other way and think of the 
Christian minister's relation to mankind. Every- 
thing which touches man touches him. The dramas 
of his people's lives are all replayed on the stage of 
his sympathies. He triumphs with the conqueror, 
and is beaten w^th the vanquished soul. He goes 
into business with the venturesome boy, and seeks 
truth with the enthusiastic student, and goes to Con- 
gress with the politician, and grows rich with the 
prosperous merchant, and fails wdth the bankrupt, 
and enters into peace with the old man who has 
weathered the storms and anchored in the harbor of 
his fireside. Whatever tells upon his people's char- 
acters he shares with them. Their temptations and 
their victories are his. He goes with them up into 
the heavens and down into the depths. His personal 
life is multiplied by theirs. And then what sight and 
studj^ of the effects of circumstances on character! 
What admiration of silent, secret heroism wdiich no 
other eyes see but his and God's !^ What knowledge 
of human strength and human weakness, — strength 
often where the world thinks that all is pitiably 
weak, weakness often w^here the w^orld thinks that 
everything is absolutely strong I AVhat anxious 
feeling^ here and there all over a nature with eaG^er 
hands to find the spring w^hich shall set free its better 
life ! What glimpses of unexpected educations of 
God ! What fears and hopes, wdiat visions of the 
mystery of man I 

I am not talking of this or that actual minister. 



838 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 

Certainly I am not daring to intrude into the sacred 
secrecy of that long and rich ministry which we have 
gathered to congratulate to-night. I am not even 
limiting my picture to what any actual minister has 
ever actually attained. I am talking o£ tlie idea of 
our profession. I am talking of that which glows 
before the eyes when the young men see their visions 
and the old men dream their dreams. There are 
base hours in the ministry in which the minister's 
relation to the world is mean and meagre, perhaps 
there are whole base ministries to which any of this 
richness of experience never comes ; but I am talking 
of the ministry as it is in its idea and as it i3 in large 
degree realized by every earnest laborer for the souls 
of men. There is no stupider mistake than that 
which pretends to think that the minister is an in- 
nocent, ignorant, amiable soul, shut out from life, 
living in cushioned security, where no tumult of the 
wicked world and no breath from the breezy hilltops 
of speculative doubt ever can intrude. It is not 
true. He is no silly optimist in spite of all his hope. 
He is no dead log of belief in spite of all his faith. 
Oh, my friends, do not think that because a minister 
sees the capacity of human nature in the light of the 
Gospel, he does not therefore see its danger. I hope 
the tragical peril of existence does not seem to other 
men more terrible than it always seems to him. I 
hope the faces which they meet upon the street are 
not more pitiable or pathetic to other eyes than they 
are to his. I hope the house-fronts do not grow 
transparent and reveal the mean and miserable life 
within, the corpses and the skeletons, to other men 



THE CHRISTIAN IVHNISTRY. 339 

as the minister sees them after his long service in the 
crowded town. 

And will you talk of him as if his ordination had 
been a spell which had placed him forever beyond 
the reach of doubt? Will you think that he has had 
somewhere in a Book or in a Bishop the ready answers 
to all the fierce questions which tear the souls of 
other men? It is not so. Just in proportion to his 
love for the truth must be the intensity of his wres- 
tling for it, his sense of the strength of all its ene- 
mies. He sits upon no mountain of assurance looking 
down upon the world of struggling men. He is in 
the thick and centre of the struggle. He has no 
scorn of doubt. He knows its strength too well. 

And yet while he is in the midst of sin and doubt 
— here is the privilege of his position — he cannot 
cease also to see goodness and faith. The wonders 
of patience that he meets ! The splendid victories 
of spiritual assurance which he sees ! Ah, my friends, 
it is not possible to talk of such a life as that man 
lives in the way in w^hich foolish people sometimes 
talk of it. It is no dead break on the wheels of time. 
It is no burnt-out cinder among the glowing coals of 
life. It is a very wheel itself. It is the livest coal 
in all the furnace, making the other coals seem cold 
beside it. As Christ in Jerusalem made the hot 
Hebrew life look tame and worthless; as Paul in 
Athens "frustrated the tokens of liars and made 
diviners mad, and turned the wise men backward and 
made their knowledge foolish." 

The time must come again, as it has come in other 
days, when our young men shall feel the vitality of 



340 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 

the Cliristian ministry, and seek it with the heroic 
consecration of their lives. If they coukl only know 
that it is of all lives richest in experience, that in it 
the passion to live finds fullest satisfaction ! What 
is it to live ? To crawl on in the dust, leaving a 
trail which the next shower hastens to wash away? 
Is it to breathe the breath of heaven as the tortoise 
does, and to bask in the sunshine like the lizard? Or 
is it to leap and run and quiver with vitality to do 
things, to learn things, to become things every clay? 
Is it to touch the eternal forces which are behind 
everything with one hand, and to lay the other on 
the quivering needles and the beating hammers of 
this common life ? Is it to deal with God and to 
deal with man? Is it to use powers to their utmost 
and to find ever new power coming out in them con- 
stantly with their use ? If this is life, then there is 
no man who lives more than the minister; and the 
generous youth whose cry is, " Let me live while I 
live," must some day feel the vitality of great ser- 
vice of God and man, and press in through the sacred 
doors saying, " Let me, too, be a Minister." 

I must come back out of my eulogy, my Psalm of 
the Ministry, which I hope has not carried me too 
far. We must return to the truth on which we were 
dwelling, and see how in this life of tlie ministry, the 
richest in experiences, the law of the evening and 
the morning, the law of the enfolding and unfolding 
of experience, especially applies. No life, I think, 
more than the ministry has a true continuousness, and 
yet none more distinctly divides itself into periods, 
each of which unfolds into new activity the expe- 



THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 341 

rience which has been enfokled by the period which 
went before. It goes back almost to the beginning 
of the life. First came the personal religious history, 
before tire boy had begun to think of ministries or 
rectorships. The early touching of the nature bj^ 
the grace of God, the first mysterious knowledge of 
the greatness of the world and of the Sonship to the 
Father that gatliered itself into a focus and revealed 
a '*• call to the ministry," the only call which has any 
true significance or value, the earnest desire to bring 
Christ to men and men to Christ, the '' Woe is me, if 
I preach not the Gospel." The call to the ministry 
completely recognized opened the long and happy 
time of education, the search for truth and the discov- 
ery from year to year of the subtile and rich corre- 
spondences of truth with the soul of man. Education 
in this special phrase of it being completed, then 
came ordination, the ever-remembered da,y, separate 
always among all the days of life, in Avhicli the young 
man brought all that he had and was, and gave it to 
the service of his Lord. It is not a day merely, — it 
is a stage in the career. It is not a point onl}^, but 
a period, so clear a series of spiritual activities does 
it include, — recognition, gratitude, humility, submis- 
sion, privilege. It is like the sunrise as it stands 
between the dawning and the day. Then comes the 
earliest ministry, — -that which our church means to 
express by the Diaconate, — that first delighted awe- 
struck touch upon the souls of fellow-men. What 
minister ever forgets it? To what minister does it 
not stand forever separate and distinct? All that 
first ministry expands then into the richness of a 



342 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 

full Priesthood, — those broad glorious days of the 
noontime of life, when, rector, pastor, servant, friend, 
the minister goes in and out among the people with 
a recognized right which j^et never loses his sense of 
his own privilege nor his reverence for their sacred- 
ness, and sees them in their joys and sorrows, by 
their joys and sorrow, ripen and deepen through the 
grace of God. There is nothing to compare in rich- 
ness with those years in any life of any man, and yet 
the end has not been reached. Another unfolding 
comes as the minister's life attains its full maturity, 
and at last he stands a veteran, perhaps in the same 
parish where once he stood a boy, and a new in- 
fluence goes forth from him, which is the power of 
all the enfolded experience of all the finished years. 
" At evening time it shall be light." That promise, 
which has been again and again fulfilled for him, 
finds its completest fulfilment at the end. 

Is there not here a most remarkable power of 
renewal ? Does not each evening open into its morn- 
ing with ever fresh vitality? It never ends, — the 
minister never retires from the ministry, and is a 
minister no longer. His ministry changes and en- 
larges, but never dies. Our Bishop Williams in 
Japan gives up the cares of his Episcopate, but it is 
only that he may go on with all his rich experience 
into some native village and begin again, burying 
himself like a seed that has in it all the packed rich- 
ness of the sunshine in which it has ripened. " The 
man was above forty years old, upon whom this 
miracle w^as showed." So cries the author of the 
Book of Acts in wonder as he sees Peter and John 



THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 343 

heal the lame man at the Gate of the Temple. Upon 
the ministry of forty years still comes new influence. 
It never loses the capacity of newness. It is ever 
receptive. It is never dead. " Thy raiment waxed 
not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell those 
forty years." That is not merely a record of the past 
demanding gratitude. It is a prophecy of the future 
bestowing hope. At the very end comes Pisgah, the 
mountain of the evening and the morning. The 
Desert lies behind, — the Promised land before. 
The servant of the Lord sees for the people of the 
Lord here on the earth great regions of faith and life 
into which he cannot lead them, into which they 
will not enter till he has passed away. He is thank- 
ful for them. And for himself the old servant of 
the Lord catches dim inspiring glimpses of an unin- 
terrupted and ever-deepening service which he shall 
render to his God in the unseen world, of a ministry 
which shall be his privilege forever, — and so he is 
content, thankful, and hopeful. 

Thus I have asked you to think to-night upon the 
ever-renewing power of all good life, and especially 
of the life of the Christian Minister. I will not close 
till in a few last words I beg you to remember what 
is the secret of that power of renewal. It is the per- 
sistency, the eternity of God. Not the minister's life 
nor any other life renews itself. The life which has 
nothing but itself to drink of dries up. It is only 
as it draws forever of the timeless and eternal life 
that any life gets freshness and perpetual renewal. 
If I am right in what I have been saying to you, and 
the life of the ministry has this special power of re- 



344 THE CHRISTIAN MINISTKY. 

newal, it is solely because it dares to stand, because 
in some sense it is compelled to stand, in peculiarly 
intimate and conscious relationship with the eternal 
God. The ministry which is not near to God, and 
tries to subsist upon itself, lives feebler and dies 
quicker than any other work of man. But it is not 
only on the ministry that there rests this necessity. 
All life Avhich would not grow stale and monotonous 
must feed itself from God. All life which would 
make to-day the transmutation place where yester- 
day shall give its power to Forever must be full of 
the felt presence, of the love and fear of Him in 
whom yesterday, to-day, and forever all are one. 

I beg you, oh, my friends, if sometimes you are 
trembling at the possible degeneracy and drying up of 
your life as you grow old, to see that here is your 
salvation. Fasten your life to God, and it must be 
young with his perpetual youth ; it must be forever 
renewed in Him. Remember how He promised by 
His prophet that " They who wait on the Lord shall 
renew their strength." Only the soul which waits 
on Him knows such renewal. It cannot conceive 
of, certainly it cannot dread, senility. It sees in its 
vision perpetual renewal securing perpetual youth to 
all eternity. It lays down each task to take up a 
greater. It goes out of each room to enter into a 
larger. It sees each evening set, only to turn in- 
stantly and look for a new sunrise. To us, whatever 
be our life, may life be that I Then thankfulness 
and expectation shall meet in every crystal moment. 
At every moment we shall say as Christ said, both 
"I have glorified thee. I have finished the work that 



THE CHPvISTIAN MIXISTIIY. 345 

thou gayest me," and also, '' Xow, oh Father, glorify 
thou me Avith thine own self." To be able to say 
the two together is to hold Evening and Morning 
blended together in one great Day of the Lord. 
Such lives which cannot die, may it be given to us 
all to live I 



XX. 

FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

*^ And He said unto them : ' Go ye into all the world and preach 
the Gospel to every creature.' " — Mark xvi. 15. 

OxcE more, tliis morning, these old familiar words 
press forward and demand our hearing. Once more 
the Master stands with His disciples on the Mount 
of Olives, and, looking abroad over the wide earth, 
claims it all for Himself. As we look upon the pict- 
ure, two other mountain scenes rise up before us, 
and we recognize that they belong to the same spirit- 
ual world with this. First we see Moses on Mount 
Pisgah looking into the promised land which he 
might not enter with his people, but into which they 
should carry the spirit and the strength and the laws 
and the hopes which he had given them. So Jesus 
could not go in bodily presence into Christian his- 
tory. He could not visibly lead down the centuries 
the ever-increasing army of His disciples. Some- 
times we wonder how it would have been had that 
been possible. What would the Christian ages have 
been if, somewhere on the earth, there had lived on 
the bodily presence of the Incarnate Christ. So the 
Jews, conquering Canaan, must sometimes have 
stopped in weary march or furious battle and said to 
one another, " O for a sight of Moses ! " but it was 
better for them, and it is better for us, as God or- 
dained it. 



roREiGx ?.iissiONs. 847 

The other picture is the mountain of the Lord's 
temptation. There, at the beginning of His ministry, 
Satan liad said to Jesus, ''All these kingdoms of the 
earth will I give Thee if Thou wilt fall down and 
worship me!" Now, standing upon the Mount of 
Olives, Jesus saw how good it was that He refused 
the tempter. Behold, they were His without Satan, 
His by the gift of His father and the redemption of 
His cross. It was as if He took formal possession of 
them when He spoke these w^ords, *' Go yc into all 
the w^orld and preach the Gospel to every creature." 

We must give these words their full and pictur- 
esque importance before we can rightly treat them as 
declaring Christ's idea and purpose for His Gospel. 
When we do thus conceive them, they mak^ us see 
Him standing and surrounding the whole vast circle 
with one sweep of prophecy. He asserts, not inci- 
dentally and casually, but most deliberately and 
solemnly, that His Gospel is to be preached to all the 
world. These disciples and their successors are to 
do it. 

When we hear of a determination or a purpose of 
the divine Christ, w-e must remind ourselves how 
much it means. It is not merely a resolution of His 
will, — it is also a declaration of the necessity of 
things. God resolves that w^hicli must be. His de- 
crees of what shall be, are really announcements of 
what is. His knowledge and His will are not, as 
they are with us, two things, — they are but one. 
When, then, Christ says to His disciples, " This Gos- 
pel of mine is to cover all the world," He is really 
declaring that the nature of His Gospel is universal. 



348 FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

It is such that only in covering the world does it 
fulfil its being. We are forever trying to make the 
universal partial, and to make the partial universal. 
We tug and stretch and pull to make that Avhich has 
in it only the capacity for some service broad enough 
and long enough to overspread that for which it is 
all incompetent, and so it cracks and breaks. On 
the other hand, we try to narrow and fold some great 
principle or power and set it to little uses which are 
not worthy of it, and so "- to partly give up Avhat is 
meant for mankind." There is no such folly in the 
adaptations which God makes when He says, '' O 
wind, go blow ; O sun, go shine unto the uttermost 
parts of heaven or earth,'' — it is because there is in 
wind or sun an energy which only the uttermost 
parts can satisfy. When He builds around some life 
a narrow wall, and bids it work its seventy years in 
that small circuit, if the wall which surrounds it is 
really of His building, it is because there its concen- 
trated strength can work its best result. And so 
when Christ said, " This my Gospel is for all man- 
kind," it was an utterance which told of what the 
Gospel was as well as of what it was to do. Not 
merely its destiny, but its nature, ^vas universal. 

When, then, the Christian faith having begun its 
life almost immediately began to spread itself abroad, 
it was doing two things. It was justifying its Lord's 
prophecy, and it was realizing its own nature. There 
came at first a moment's pause and hesitation. We 
can see in those chapters of the Book of Acts how 
for a few years the faith could not quite believe the 
story of itself which was speaking at its heart. It 



FOREIGN MISSIONS. 349 

heard the ends of the earth calling it, but it could 
not see beyond the narrow coasts of Judea. But 
the beauty of those early days is the way in which 
it could not be content with that. It is not the ends 
of the earth calling in desperation for something 
which was not made to help them, which had no 
vast vocation, which at last started out desperately 
to do a work which must be done, but for which it 
felt no fitness in itself. The heart of the church 
feels the need of going as much as the ends of the 
w^orld desire that it should come. It is ''deejj an- 
swering to deep!" He who studies the early ex- 
pansion of the Christian truth feels himself standing 
between a world which must be saved and a Power 
of Salvation which must give itself away. The 
world is only half conscious of its need. The Pgwer 
of Salvation does not understand the tumult at its 
heart ; but both are real, and they are reaching out 
for one another. And the student of those days 
feels the inspiration as he stands between them. It 
is like standing between the sun and the earth in the 
morning. 

This is the fundamental meaning, the fundamental 
truth of foreign missions. It goes as deep as the 
nature of the Gospel. It is written in the necessities 
of the human soul. And now comes in another prin- 
ciple, which is, that when a force meant for a large 
expansion is denied the large expansion which its 
nature craves, it does not merely fail of the larger 
work which it is not allowed to do, but it loses its 
best capacity and power in the narrow field to which 
it is confined. It is unfortunate that we can never 



350 FOREIGX MISSIONS. 

speak of foreign missions without remembering and 
taking into account the objections to them, the dis- 
belief in them, which are in many Christian people's 
minds. All such objections and disbelief must, as 
it seems to me, be met by the broad principle which 
I have just now stated. Any arrested development, 
any denial to a power, of its true range and scope, 
not merely limits it, but poisons it; not merely shuts 
it out of regions where it wants to go, but makes it 
work feebly or falsely in the region to which it is 
confined. 

You forbid a limit its right to grow to its true 
size, and your stunted limit is apt to be not merely 
small, but sickly. You fence a city round with 
narrow walls, and, shut in on itself, it festers and 
corrupts and fills its crowded streets with misery. 
You shut an idea out from all opportunity of appli- 
cation, and it becomes fantastic and insincere. This 
is where cranks and fanatics are made. It is not in 
ideas going too far, it is in their being denied some 
true and legitimate activity that they become un- 
healthy. Whatever goes in the direction of its 
nature, and is not pressed beyond the power wdiich 
it naturally possesses, and is not hindered or ob- 
structed till its work is done, works healthily, and 
neither grows peevish nor grows dead. It is the 
fire which you shut in tight that either goes out or 
explodes. 

The glory of liberty is this, that it gives everything 
its chance, it lets each thing do that which it"was 
made to do. To force anything to do that which it 
was not made to do is not liberty, though sometimes 



FOREIGN MISSIONS. 351 

it usurps the name. It is only another shaveiy. But 
the curse of ordinary slavery is tlie curse which be- 
longs to all arrested development. Xot merely it 
shuts power out of fields which belong to it: it makes 
it Avork feebly or falsely in the fields Avhere it is un- 
naturally confined. 

This has always been true in the history of the 
Christian Church, Avherever its outward tendency, 
its missionary activity, has been hampered, its inw^ard 
life has suffered. Perhaps there has been no illustra- 
tion of this more striking than right here in our 
own New England. The Puritans who came first to 
our shores were deeply, overwhelmingly religious 
men. They came here for religious purposes. Their 
minds were always busy with religious problems. 
Their souls were eager w^ith the passion for spiritual 
grow^th. They tried to live, they did live, very near 
to God; but they had little immediate missionary 
spirit. They expected the ultimate submission of the 
world to Christ, but they felt themselves summoned 
to very little instant action toward the great result. 
Their thought was more intensive than extensive 
in its character. Except wdiere the irrepressible pity 
of Eliot and his companions touched the Indian life 
they may be said to have had no missionary w^ork. 
There is much to account for the fact in their history 
and their circumstances, but the fact is clear. 

And wdiat was the result ? The arrested develop- 
ment of that intense religious life wrought its inevi- 
table consequence. You all know something of what 
a confusion of intricate, complicated, and practically 
^incomprehensible dogma the New England theology 



352 FOKEIGN MISSIONS. 

became. The endless discussion of faiitastic ques- 
tions occupied a large part of the people's thouglit. 
The minute and morbid study of their spiritual 
conditions distorted and tormented anxious souls. 
Strange theories of the atonement grew like weeds. 
A willingness to be lost Avas made the dreadful con- 
dition of salvation. Heresies sprang out of the soil 
where orthodoxy lay corrupt and almost dead. It 
was the sad fate of a religious life denied its due de- 
velopment and shut in on itself. 

It was not till this century began, not till at 
Williamstown, behmd the summer haystack, the little 
group of students consecrated themselves to the ex- 
tension of the Gospel; not till the missionary spirit 
took possession of the Mew England churches, that 
the mists began to scatter and a healthier condition 
began to prevail in religious thought and life. The 
old intensity we fain would see agani, but not exactly 
as it was. If the extensive impulse shall go forth 
unhindered, there must be a new intensity in time 
which shall be better than the old. Already we think 
we begin to see some of its signs. They make us 
dream of what it may be in the fulness of its power. 
And every sign it shows, every dream which we dream 
concerning it, connects it closely with the missionary 
spirit, with the sending of the Christian Gospel abroad 
throughout the world. 

I must not linger long upon my way to bid you 
think how true all this is with respect to the per- 
sonal and individual religious life. A man is made a 
Christian by the grace of God, and for what? Not, 
as we have said a thousand times, to get him into 



FOREIGN MISSIONS. 353 

heaven, but in order that through him the grace of 
God may go abroad and some piece of the workl be 
saved. Let the new Christian give liimself to that 
idea, and liow tlie religious Ufe tlirives in iiim ! H;;\v 
healthily, how vigorously it grows! How it beaio 
witness of itself at every moment tlmt it is the soul's 
true life I Let it lose that idea and think of itself 
alone, and two results must follow: first, regions of 
life which ought to have been blessed by it go with- 
out their blessing ; and, second, the spirit of selfish- 
ness takes possession of the faith itself. Hardness, 
uncharitableness, bigotry, fantasticalness, that which 
I think one comes to dread more and more in religion, 
the loss of simplicity, the loss of humanness, which 
means the loss of divineness : these invade the precious 
substance of the man's religion. It is possible to state 
what occurs in various ways. It is possible to say 
that the Christian neglects his duty and God punishes 
him. It is also possible to say that the outgoing flood 
of life is stopped and hindered and thrown back upon 
the soul, which, overwhelmed by it, is like the dreary 
marsh over which the stagnant water spreads itself, 
which ought to be energetically pressing out to sea. 

I like to state the case under this latter form, be- 
cause it seems to assert the truth, that missions are 
not an occasional duty, but the essential necessity 
of Christian life. It is not an exceptional enterprise 
to which man is occasionally summoned, it is the 
fundamental condition without which man cannot 
live. It is not like an army summoned once or twice 
a century to repulse a special foe, feeling itself un- 
natural, expecting from the moment of its enlist- 



354 FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

ment, the time when it shall lay down its arms and 
go back to the works of peace. It is like the daily 
activity of the city, taken up naturally every morn- 
ing, constituting the normal expression of the city's 
life, never to cease while the city lives, the pulse 
which shows at any moment what degree of vitality 
the city has, — such is the missionary spirit to the 
Christian Church. 

Of all I have been saying there has been one great, 
ever-instructive illustration in history which is the 
experience of the Hebrew race. Have you ever 
thought how exactly the modern Christian who ^' does 
not believe in foreign missions '' corresponds to the 
Jew of the Old Testament? He has not indeed the 
excuse and self-explanation which the best Jews had. 
He does not say to himself as they said, that it is for 
a purpose and a deliberate design of God that his 
religion is shut up in himself and forbidden to go 
abroad. But, without the excuse or explanation, his 
condition is exactly the same as that of the old Jew. 
His is a perfect modern Judaism. Look at him. Con- 
scious of privilege, perfectly awai;e that God has 
given to him truth and light which are inestimably 
precious, holding the tables of a divme law in his 
sanctuary, feeling the illumination of a divine wisdom 
burn in the jewels of his breastplate, he is perpetually 
aware of how his life belongs to God, and, looking 
forth from the observatory of his privilege, he sees 
the whole dark world. Sometimes he pities it, some- 
times he despises it, sometimes he almost hates it. 
We can see each of those three emotions, now one 
and now another, in the wonderfuUv distinct, ex- 



FOREIGN MISSIONS. 355 

pressive face of the Hebrew which looks out from 
the wondrous Book. 

This modern Hebrew sometimes recognizes how 
the same spirit which is clear and strong in him shows 
signs of faint and feeble Avorking in the great mass 
of uncalled, unprivileged humanity, just as the old 
Jew could not always shut his eyes and ears to the 
working of the Spirit of God among the Gentiles. 
Sometimes he hears the beating of the waves on their 
restriction, and catches glimpses of some possible 
day when they will break through and claim the 
world; but, for the present, now, lie is here and the 
world is there, — the river on this side and the sea on 
that side shut him in. He will not cross either of 
them to find those who lie beyond. He prays his 
prayers, and they are real prayers , he believes his 
truths, and they are real truths ; he does his tasks, 
and they are real tasks, — but what is the spiritual 
life of the Esquimaux among his snows, or the Asi- 
atic in his jungle, is nothing in the v/orld to him. 
The very question smites his ear with no reality. 

This is our Judaism ! Do you remember Peter on 
the housetop at Joppa? Can you not see that 
stanch, sturdy Hebrew figure stepping eagerly along 
the^road to Cesarea after he had seen the vision? 
Can you not hear the words v/hich come pour- 
ing out of his lips as he stands at last in the presence 
of the listening heathen, " God hath shown me 
that I should not call any man common or unclean"? 
There is a delight full of surprise, '' A wonderful 
truth," he seems to say, ''and yet how strange 
that I did not see it all the while. How strange 



356 FOKEIGN MISSIONS. 

that I ever should have imagmecl that God could 
thmk any of his chikh'eii unclean or common I " So 
we all feel when our Judaisms at last break open. 
So we look out on a new life and are amazed that the 
old life ever satisfied us. So the Christian, made 
the missionar}^, seems for the first time to have 
known what his faith really is. 

I have said that when, with the arrest of its devel- 
opment released, the Christian faith goes forth in 
missionary effort, part of the blessing which results 
is the increase of health and life in the home Chris- 
tianity out of which the missionary impulse starts. 
No part of that return of power is more valuable 
than the wa^ in which the personalness of the relig- 
ious life is kept alive. Do you see what I mean? 
The ordinary long-established Christianity tends to 
organization. It loses the person in the institution. 
It seems to trust to forces which have little of in- 
dividual freedom. It runs to machinery. But the 
great truth which missionary history bears witness 
to is that all missionary effort must be supremel}^ 
personal. It is not an institution, but a man, that 
hears the appeal of Macedonia and sails across the 
sea. From Paul all the way down through all the 
ages it is a line of shining persons, each kindled with 
his own faith, each working in his own way, that 
makes the continuity of missions. They own the 
church; they are the church. But they are the 
church n that personal expression of its strength 
which always has been and always will be the most 
real and powerful. The shutting up, then, of 
missionary activity is the deadening of the per- 



FOREIGN MISSIONS. 357 

sonal life of the church. The non-missionary church 
is the most hide-bound in creed and organization. 

As we bear this in mind, our eyes and hearts 
become impatient for a sight they long to see. It 
is not simply a waking up of the church in a 
missionary direction that we covet ; it is not 
simply the opening of stingy pockets and the pouring 
out of vast wealth, — it is the want of men ; it is the 
standing forth of brave young Christian souls saying, 
'' I want to go. My messao^e burns upon my lips 
until I tell it. Send me !" Are there none here? 
The choicest and the best are none too good. Are 
there none here ? I tell you, friends, the foreign mis- 
sionary work w^aits for nothing but that strong, first- 
rate, leading men, full of the simple faith that God 
is the world's Father, and Christ is tlie world's King^ 
— the missionary work only needs them to show its 
strencfth, to claim the souls of waitinof multitudes to 

CD ^ O 

the world's end, and the abundant confidence and 
support of Christians here at home. Whenever such 
a man has appeared, his power has been wonderful. 
Men, far inferior, liave done enough to show througli 
all their failures what a great missionaiy might ac- 
complish. That he Avill come, the Christian heart 
believes and waits. 

Until he comes the church goes on obedient to 
her idea, keeping tlie field open for liis coming. 
Here is the real uncertainty of foreign missions. 
No man can say when the true missionary will ap- 
pear. It is not by boards and committees and estab- 
lishments that the Gospel of Christ is ultimately to 
be spread throughout the world. Only by fiery- 



358 FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

hearted preachers of the truth and workers in the 
cause of Christ can that be done. Just as it is not 
by schools and academies, but by great minds, great 
thinkers, great discoverers, great scholars, that knowl- 
edge makes vast advances and ignorance is dispelled. 
But schools and academies hold fast the ground 
which has been gained, keep the ideas of learning 
vivid, and furnish the cradles out of which the great 
creative geniuses proceed. So all our ordinary mis- 
sionary operations furnish the basis for great personal 
work, tempt and make possible the strong efficiency 
of ardent sonls, and occupy that which the pioneer 
has won with the strong grasp of permanent posses- 
sion. 

But never can we forget that it is not by machin- 
eries or institutions, but only by human natures, only 
by men, that any great victory of liglitover darkness, 
of truth over error, is achieved. Therefore we pray 
and look and long for men. Let them appear, and 
all the apparatus of woik may be most primitive and 
incomplete, still the work will be done. Let them 
be wanting, and with the most perfect apj)aratus there 
is no result. Institutions embody ideas and offer 
opportunities and hold results, but only men do the 
world's work. Very interesting, very precious is the 
church as an organization, with its history, its order, 
its symbols, and its forms ; but '^ how beautiful upon 
the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good 
tidings, that publisheth peace I " 

As a religion becomes more deep and spiritual, the 
preservation of its essential spirit will of course be- 
come at once more difficult and more important; and 



FOREIGN MISSIONS. 359 

if, as T liave all along been saying, the effectiveness 
of a faith depends upon the absoluteness with which 
its spirit is preserved, there will possibly enough 
come times when an inferior faith may seem at least 
to do a work in which the supreme faith of Cliris- 
tianity appears to fail. Tliis, as I take it, is the real 
fact rcGfardui^^ that of which much has been said in 
certain quarters very lately. It has been declared 
that Islam, tlie religion of Mohammed, is making 
great progress both in India and in Africa, where 
Christianity moves very slowl)^ It is ever pleaded 
that perhaps only by a previous conversion to 
Mohammedanism can the lowest forms of heath- 
enism mount graduallj^ to the spiritual heights of 
Christian faith. It is not easy to learn what the 
exact facts are; but if, as it is probable, the lower 
faith makes converts where the higher fails, it is 
not because the higher is too high, certainly not 
because it is less true, but because it needs stronger 
men with purer inspirations, and those it has not 
found. Let the divine flame of the love of Christ 
the Crucified and of all His Fatlier's children for 
His sake burn as intenselj^ in a thousand bosoms as 
the fanatical enthusiasm of the prophet blazes in a 
thousand swords of his disciples, and tlie victory 
cannot be doubtful. That is the temporary weak- 
ness of Christianity wliicli must be its final strength, 
that it can fight Avith no false weapons, and is strong 
only in proportion as it is pure. Not by an Islam 
Christianity of terror, but by a true Christianity of 
love the struggle must be carried forward and the 
victoiy finally obtained. 



360 FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

The close association of the qualit}^ of Christi- 
anity with its quantity, if I may so call it, of the 
sort in which it exists at the centre with the power 
which it exerts at the ends, gives great importance, 
from the missionary point of view, to every change 
of thought and feeling which Christian faith under- 
ofoes where it has lono^est been established. 

In general, it may be said that there are two great 
conceptions of that faith, within one of which or the 
oth'er all lesser differences may be included. One of 
them makes Christ and His religion to be unnatural 
to man ; the other counts them most supremely 
natural. T do not now argue which is true. I doubt 
not there is truth in both ; I doubt not there are 
points of view from which the whole idea of incar- 
nation and redemption may have its value in its 
strangeness, ma.y seem to bring as its appeal, in virtue 
of its being a terrible necessity, an awful and almost 
violent remedial interference with the headlong 
ruin of a rebellious world ; I doubt not that there 
is another point of view from which the coming and 
the work of Christ must seem to be the flower of all 
hopes and struggles which humanity has had from 
the beginning, '' the Desire of all Nations," the most 
natural, perhaps the inevitable utterance of that 
Divinity, which has always been in and under human 
life, made violent and tragical in its manifestation 
onlj^by the false crust of inhuman sin and selfishness 
through which the divine fire was compelled to 
break. 

I do not now argue which of these conceptions of 
Christianity is true. I only ask myself, with the 



FOREIGN MISSIONS. 361 

second of them so largely, so more and more largely, 
occupying men's devout and thoughtful minds, what 
will be the effect on Christian missions ? I ask 
myself, and I cannot doubt the answer. That mis- 
sions will fail because one aspect of Christian truth, 
deep, tender, strong, has claimed the Christian heart 
out of which missionary impulse must proceed, 1 
cannot for a moment think. That truth which, just 
so far as it is true, enlarges the sympathy of man, 
breaks down the walls of self-conceited privilege, and 
makes the lowest true shareholders in the highest, 
— that truth cannot by any possibility paralyze, it 
must by every certainty invigorate, the outgoing 
energy of missionary zeal. It may, it must, change 
and modify and color, but it cannot destroy, the mis- 
sionary spirit. 

If we believe that, then we may w^ell put to our- 
selves the questions, — and with the putting of these 
questions we shall be ready to close our missionary 
thoughts and pass to our missionary offering, — we 
may well put to ourselves, I say, the questions, 
What has the simpler, broader, and more natural 
Christianity to say to the missionary ? what to the 
heathen? what to the false and imperfect faiths? 
And what w^ill it expect as the result of missionary 
work ? 

What will it say to the missionary? It will say, 
" Go, like your Master, not to judge, but to redeem 
and save. Go, not with threats of what will come 
without your Gospel, but Avith glowing promise of 
what may come with it. Go, and make men be, by 
teaching that they are, the sons of God. Go simply, 



6b2 FOllEIGX MISSIONS. 

naturally, not 'carrying Christ' across the sea, but 
knowing well that you cannot find any darkest spot 
on earth where He is not already." 

What shall it say to the heathen ? " Whom ye 
ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you. The 
life you are living is not your true life. You are 
made for the licrht. Behold the Lio-ht of Life ! Let 
Him redeem you. Lo! through the awful cross He 
saved you, if you will be saved from death." 

What will it say to the false and imperfect faiths? 
''I cannot hate you. I cannot denounce you, save as 
the evil of man has mixed itself with your truth. I 
reverence you ; I pity you ; I would interpret you 
to yourself. It is my Christ that you are feeling for. 
Come, let us seek for Him together." 

What will it look for as the result? A great free 
service of Christ throughout the Avorld. Each con- 
tinent, each nation, each soul, serving the same Lord 
in its own way, with its own worship, its own work. 
One chorus of obedience and growing goodness in 
a thousand tones, swelling up forever from the re- 
deemed Earth to the King and to the Lamb. 

The truth which carries such messages and has 
such hopes as those must be dear to God's heart, and 
is a noble truth for men to believe in and live by. 

But, after all our thoughts and speculations, may 
God give us pity for the heathen, and help us to 
send to them that Gospel which is our Glory and 
Joy ! 






^ 






aV 














0' s 









w %^^^^:«' .0 






•^^ 



.0 o^ 



<:J> <^ 












^v 






•J -u , 



'as 







^. ^b. 



>^ "^^ 



v 



Oo. 






.K 



.^^ -n- 







^^ *7, >«' x^^ • 






.0 



^c. 












<a\ 



.-^* 






'. 'b. 



>0^ 






\^^^. 



^. * ^ > <.0^ 






">^^^- 

A 



'/ , 



0,'' "^ 



'o,K-» A ^o^' •.«> 



v^ .^ 















1 t ff -i - 
' o . X ■» .'A 






%/'^>^ 



\^^^^.-. 1 



-t v 



.^^ %. 



" ^ 



^ 



' O' 



^ r ->5. .^' 















>- 



v^^ 



o 

s 



^c 



-A- 






o </>_ 










''-'■i:|''^;i'i:i'iii'iii|i?i!li 






1 .; ,t| 






